Question of the Day - 31 October 2006

The short answer is, we don't know. For such a popular phrase, used by everyone from baby-wear advertisers and Wall Street analysts to Robert de Niro (A Bronx Tale) and "Star Trek," its origins remain frustratingly obscure.

But you're correct that the phrase is mainly associated with desperate gamblers, principally crapshooters. It even gave its name to a low-budget 1974 "blaxploitation" flick about a numbers kingpin's attempts to stay in business as the Mafia and police close in around him (later retitled Jive Turkey).

It's a favorite of lyricists as well as Hollywood script writers. For example:

• On their 1994 track "Godd Complexx," Public Enemy rapped, "Ah baby needs a new pair of shoes/Ah pappa's got the funky blues/Ah mamma plays the crosswords in the news."
• A Gulf Coast outfit we'd never previously heard of, called the Harry Slik Band, penned a tune called "IQ Zoo" on its 1994 album "Gin & Juice," in which they lament, "I know baby needs a new pair of shoes. You know I heard it a million times."
• "Swamp Monster" Tony Joe White's "It's Still Called the Blues," covered by such legends as BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Buddy Guy, includes the lyrics "Baby needs new shoes/Mama needs a new dress/Daddy's out scufflin'/Trying to do his best."
• On the CD "Swamp Opera," by blues-circuit old-timers Too Slim and the Taildraggers, track number 12 is titled, "My Baby Needs A New Pair Of Shoes."
• There's a barbershop quartet track, which we haven't heard, but is allegedly downloadable from the Library of Congress' collection. It’s part of "The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip," during which the couple recorded nearly 700 ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, lullabies, spirituals, and work songs during a three-month, 5,502-mile, road trip through the southern United States. One of the tracks they captured, performed by Ray Wood on April 13, 1939, in Houston, Texas, was titled, "My Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes."
• And lastly, we came across a traditional close-harmony folk song called "Roll Dem Bones," which is now in the public domain and actually available as a cell-phone ring-tone, which goes:

  "Shine, shine, shine 'em up fine, Shine 'em up fine for a dime! My baby needs a new pair of shoes! Come on, you seven! Roll you 'leven! And he won't get 'em if I lose! Hop up you 'leven! Roll you 'leven! Roll, roll, roll dem bones, Roll dem in de square, Roll dem on de sidewalk, Streets or anywhere! We roll dem in de morning, We roll dem in de night. Oh, we roll dem bones de whole day long When de cops are out of sight!"

  History doesn't relate who wrote this song, but the track was recorded by Bill "Jazz" Gillum, sometime in the late 1930s or '40s, and appears on "The Essential Jazz Gillum" CD, which you can find on-line for around $12.

  Although we can't guarantee — and in fact doubt — that this was the first ever use of the phrase, this last song at least seems to bring us pretty close to that point, and marries up the whole shoe thing with the game of street craps. The phrase obviously has a long history, stretching back at least to the 1930s, when it was already being used as a plea to the gambling deities, specifically in conjunction with the game of craps.

  As ever, if anyone has anything additional or more definitive to add, please let us know.