Author Topic: What's a sand footin' woman? (Read 2855 times)

Lyle Lofgren · « **on:** January 12, 2012, 11:19:32 AM »

A quote appeared here saying something to the effect, "I don't want no sand footin' woman who'll cut my throat."

I clicked forward before the quote clicked with me, so I don't know where it came from. Google has never heard of a sand footin' woman. Any ideas what she is, so I can be sure to avoid her? Thanks.

Lyle

Gumbo · « **Reply #1 on:** January 12, 2012, 11:37:36 AM »

No idea. There was some mention in the Blind Willie McTell Lyrics thread but no definition.

The quote was taken from a Bukka White interview.

Slack · « **Reply #2 on:** January 12, 2012, 11:40:55 AM »

My guess would be: sand footin = bare footin' = a low class woman.

Richard · « **Reply #3 on:** January 12, 2012, 12:10:34 PM »

And the various other references to sand in songs which I can't immediately think of

but include the likes of "digging sand" "it's sand man" ?

Rivers · « **Reply #4 on:** January 12, 2012, 04:15:48 PM »

The quote was from Bukka White, the quote in full is typically laconic:

I don't want to get my throat cut by a sand-footin' woman or anything unnecessary like that - Bukka White

I entered it but failed to provide attribution, bad me. I'm 90% certain it came from this rekkid though, which includes the aforementioned Remembrance of Charlie Patton monologue:

GNP Crescendo 10011 (1972)
Legacy of the Blues Vol. 1
= Poljazz PSJ-147 (Po 1976)

...visible on Stefan's Bukka White discog page at http://www.wirz.de/music/whitebuk.htm

I wonder if it's listed in Stephen Calt's Barrelhouse Words book, somebody check.

blueshome · « **Reply #5 on:** January 13, 2012, 12:54:24 AM »

Somebody did! No reference in Calt.

"raisin' sand" was to cause trouble, maybe there is a link?

Bunker Hill · « **Reply #6 on:** January 13, 2012, 01:35:01 AM »

Don't know if this is relevant but according to Robert Goldberg's A Jazz Lexicon (Knopf, 1964) there was a black vaudevillian dance step called The Sand which was later revived in Harlem during the 40s.

frankie · « **Reply #7 on:** January 13, 2012, 02:10:09 AM »

I have a friend who tap dances, and he once once described learning "sand dancing" - a kind of pre-cursor to tap that's performed in soft shoes (no taps). This site has some history:

http://www.theatredance.com/tap/

Lyndvs · « **Reply #8 on:** January 13, 2012, 03:05:45 AM »

Wilson and Keppel, Sand Dance. 1934

dj · « **Reply #9 on:** January 13, 2012, 04:56:33 AM »

Fred Astaire does a sand dance near the start of Top Hat.

I doubt that "sand footin' woman" has anything to do with sand dancing though. The phrase is probably very much related to "raising sand", maybe through the idea of kicking sand around with one's feet.

Hmmm... I wonder if the origin of "raising sand" was the image of two people fighting, kicking up dirt as they wrestled?

bnemerov · « **Reply #10 on:** January 13, 2012, 06:27:38 AM »

my (unreliable) memory is of Zora Neal Hurston using "sand foot" as a Negro colloquialism for a "hick"...a country person ignorant of more urban ways. i.e. Not Hip.

uncle bud · « **Reply #11 on:** January 13, 2012, 06:33:34 AM »

Quite possibly related to raising sand as suggested. Perhaps another possibility is a variation of "fanfoot". Calt does have a definition for this, "an indiscriminately promiscuous female, who 'don't care who she's with, long as she get what she wants [sex]' (Skip James). Gary Davis defined fanfoot as a woman who 'gets drunk, falls down in the street...don't care who get on her; don't even know half the time,' and distinguishes fanfoots from other promiscuous women by virtue of their physical dirtiness."

He goes on to suggest fan likely derives from fen, archaic British slang for prostitute "or its original standard English meaning of mud or filth (OED). The suffix may have a similarly archaic basis in either foot, a term for an act of copulation dating to Shakespeare...or footy, a term Grose cites as meaning despicable, and the EDD as obscene or base. The latter gave rise to footer, recorded by the EDD as 'a term of the deepest contempt,' which is almost certainly related to fanfoot."

Is some of that reaching?

Gumbo · « **Reply #12 on:** January 13, 2012, 06:38:40 AM »

re: fanfoot so it's less a case of duck shaped feet than both feet opening up in a fanlike way. Like a groupie without the group perhaps ..... (runs)

dj · « **Reply #13 on:** January 13, 2012, 06:51:16 AM »

Thanks for remembering "fanfoot", uncle bud. It would make sense that "sand footin' woman" is a mixture of the ideas of "fanfoot" and "raisin' sand".

Slack · « **Reply #14 on:** January 13, 2012, 07:07:57 AM »

That sand dance video was worth this whole thread!

Quote

Is some of that reaching?

Well, I know I'm still sticking to the simplest explanation.... e.g. a woman with sand on her feet.

uncle bud · « **Reply #15 on:** January 13, 2012, 07:45:49 AM »

Quote from: Gumbo on January 13, 2012, 06:38:40 AM

re: fanfoot so it's less a case of duck shaped feet than both feet opening up in a fanlike way. Like a groupie without the group perhaps ..... (runs)

Depends on whether one accepts Calt's definition, I guess. Did he ask Skip James and Gary Davis the meaning of the word fanfoot, or ask them about the McTell verse that is used as the example for the entry in Barrelhouse Words? i.e. were they responding to the lines about women drinking whisky and running around like a fanfoot clown, or specifically to the definition of fanfoot, outside the context of the McTell verse? I sometimes find Calt tries to jam a square peg into a round hole. So 18th or 19th century British slang can appear in citations, but usage in early 20th century southern culture is not necessarily traced in a convincing way. Major leaps are made sometimes, IMO.

misterjones · « **Reply #16 on:** January 13, 2012, 07:59:28 AM »

My assumption would be that it relates, as some have noted, to a woman "raisin' sand", which is frequently in blues lyrics (Lightnin' Hopkins comes to mind). I have always assumed that "raisin' sand" was a reference to a hoofed animal (such as a bull) that as a sign of dominance, anger or the willingness to attack "raises sand" so to speak by scraping the ground with its hoof.

Johnm · « **Reply #17 on:** January 13, 2012, 08:12:23 AM »

I think John D. has it right. Bare-footed women are generally spoken of slightingly in blues lyrics, as per "Let me tell you what these barefooted strollers will do". I don't think this has anything to do with raising sand. I suspect it's just Booker White's personal version of the prejudice against bare-footed women.
All best,
Johnm

Lyle Lofgren · « **Reply #18 on:** January 13, 2012, 08:38:09 AM »

Alas, my copies of Hurston's books don't have indexes, so I can't check there without reading all of them again. Bartlett's late 19th century Dictionary of Americanisms has nothing, and neither does Partridge's 1940s Dictionary of American Slang.

But this thread caused me to coin a word that should exist: "implain." It's the opposite of "explain," and means to explore all kinds of possibilities without necessarily deciding which one is correct -- i.e., the understanding that these questions are often mysteries rather than puzzles.

I personally like to ponder all these possibilities. Considering that American usage has no academy to decide what's an official meaning, all the interpretations could be correct.

What about Mary Ann, who's down by the seaside sifting sand? Or is that just something Harry Bellafonte made up?

Lyle

Rivers · « **Reply #19 on:** January 13, 2012, 06:47:09 PM »

Implain, I like it, nice one.

Mr.OMuck · « **Reply #20 on:** January 13, 2012, 07:37:24 PM »

Sandman Sims:

I'm guessing however that a sandfootin' woman is a woman who raises sand in a manner similar to a disgusted baseball team manager kicking sand at an ump.

robbyross · « **Reply #21 on:** February 10, 2012, 09:22:09 AM »

May be I have found something into the book "Talkin' that talk: The language of blues and jazz" by Jean Paul Levet.
It' s in french; it states the meaning of "sandfoot" as
"femme de mauvaise vie, de m?urs dissolues"

In "Your time to worry" Blind Willie McTell sings:
"You drink your whiskey,
Run around
Get out in the street
And act a sandfoot clown"

Hope that helps.
Roberto

Lyle Lofgren · « **Reply #22 on:** February 10, 2012, 11:32:20 AM »

Quote from: robbyross on February 10, 2012, 09:22:09 AM

May be I have found something into the book "Talkin' that talk: The language of blues and jazz" by Jean Paul Levet.
It' s in french; it states the meaning of "sandfoot" as
"femme de mauvaise vie, de m?urs dissolues"

In "Your time to worry" Blind Willie McTell sings:
"You drink your whiskey,
Run around
Get out in the street
And act a sandfoot clown"

Hope that helps.
Roberto

You sent me to the basement to dig out my old French-English dictionary, but that definition makes sense in the contexts everyone's quoted so far. I think I can stop wondering about it. Thanks, Roberto.

Lyle

ScottN · « **Reply #23 on:** November 24, 2012, 10:54:51 PM »

In Calt's Skip James biography at the end of chapter eight it quotes James as saying that "sandfoot" or "fanfoot" women are essentially the same thing.

The typical females who attended such clubs were floozies known as "sandfoot" or "fanfoot" women. "That's the type of women that don't have no special man and don't care whether she see him again since she can get what she got [elsewhere]."

Thanks,
Scott

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Author Topic: What's a sand footin' woman? (Read 2855 times)