Judy Garland and Gene Kelly performing a tame (and very white) version of Balling the Jack in the 1942 film For Me and My Gal
4 October 2023
The verb phrase to ball the jack has an uncertain origin. It is commonly said to have its origin is in railroad jargon, but any such claim has to be prefaced by perhaps or possibly. The evidence of the phrase’s early use, albeit far from dipositive, suggests that an origin in American Black slang referring to sexually suggestive dance movements is also possible.
The phrase has two primary meanings, which both date to the early twentieth century. The two senses are recorded within a few years of each other, and both undoubtedly had currency in oral discourse before being written down, so it’s impossible to tell which came first. The first sense is to move quickly, later extended to mean to work hard. The second, first seen in Black slang, is to dance or move one’s body in a sexually suggestive fashion.
The best guess as to the phrase’s origin is that it comes from railroad jargon that dates to at least 1905: highball (signal a locomotive to proceed) + jack (locomotive). But the first recorded uses of ball the jack in a railroad context come a few years after that phrase is already established, but not so long after that it could simply have gone unrecorded in print. And it’s possible that the two senses have two distinct origins, although ones that undoubtedly influenced one another.
The earliest uses of ball the jack that I have found come in a pair of articles in Florida’s Tampa Tribune in September 1911. Both articles put the phrase in the mouth of the same man and the context is of speed in loading cargo, specifically rock ore, onto ships. The first is from 24 September:
Meanwhile, Mr. Giles is repairing little odds and ends about the elevator, rearranging certain details and so on. When the fall season starts up Mr. Giles says he will “be ready to ball the jack” with phosphate tramps.
The second comes three days later on the 27th:
Heavy rains are seriously interfering with the loading of ships. Almost every boat in port is being thrown behind by the weather. The Spanish Steamship Madrileno, for instance, was slated to clear today, but the rain yesterday afternoon delayed it a day. Tomorrow, however, Seaboard Foreman Giles says “she will ball the jack.”
The dance sense first appears a little less than a year later in a song title. Early uses of this sense are primarily found in Black newspapers. The first is in the Indianapolis Freeman of 15 June 1912 in a description of an entertainment act:
The Original String Beans,
Known to us generally as May and May, was, as usual, a riot. Mr. May is becoming more of a legitimate comedian than he was in the days of yore. Mrs. May looks the same as when we last saw her—young and pretty. Their act is a singing and talking one, but good all the way through. They have several new songs, all of which are hits—“Ball the Jack Rage,” “All Night Long” and others.
There were several songs of the era that used ball the jack in their titles. Another is found in Georgia’s Savannah Tribune, another Black paper, of 23 August 1913:
Sept. 22nd, Monday, “Ball the Jack Short” by Pa Pa Hawkie and Little Ed at Masonic Temple. Admission 25 and 35 cents.
Perhaps the most famous tune of that title is the 1913 Ballin’ the Jack by Black musicians and vaudeville entertainers Jim Burris (lyrics) and Chris Smith (music). The chorus of that song goes:
First you put your two knees close up tight,
Then you sway ’em to the left,
Then you sway ’em to the right,
Step around the floor kind of nice and light,
Then you twis’ around and twis’ around with all your might,
Stretch your lovin’ arms straight out in space
Then you do the Eagle Rock style and grace
Swing your foot way ’round then bring it back,
Now that’s what I call “Ballin’ the Jack,”
“Ballin’ the Jack.”
And we see the phrase used in a description of a movie featuring an all-Black cast that appeared in the New York Age on 16 October 1913. The article is urging a boycott of the film’s production company for producing the film which is loaded with racist stereotypes. Exactly what ball the jack means here isn’t clear, but given the term’s usage elsewhere, it probably means some type of suggestive dance or movement:
The “all colored” picture, to which exceptions are taken bears the title of “Slim, the Cowpuncher.” Overlooking without comment such an inappropriate name for a picture supposed to deal with Negro life, [I] shall tell about the film, especially the second half of the reel, in which a number of colored persons are seen wandering aimlessly about. The subjects shown are of the lazy, indolent type of Negro, who proceed to “ball the jack,” drink gin, shoot dice and steal watermelons. Colored theatregoers who have had the misfortune to see this picture refer to it in disgust. The regard it as an insult to the race.
(The word which I interpret to be “I” is obscured in the digital scan of the paper. This may be a scan error, but it looks like the editors have scratched out a typo in the original, a single letter that is not “I.”)
And the first clear use of the phrase in prose to mean a sexually suggestive dance is in the Chicago Defender of 8 November 1913:
One evening this week the writer was taken to the fourth floor of a flat building on State street. This flat was kept by a woman known as “Mrs.,” but not married. Ordered a round of drinks. Several women in the flat “visiting.” Four bottles Edelweiss served with two whiskys. Paid 75 cents. Half hour later we made our departure. Was informed “not to forget the place” and “when you come again bring some more friends.” [Left] and went on second floor. This lady had a piano. Hilarity at its height; two women full doing a dance they called “balling the Jack” and other disrespectful capers. Bought a round for the crowd and left.
A pair of articles in the Indianapolis Freeman of 20 December 1913 decry entertainers who ball the jack and the producers and theater managers who permit it:
The actor who swears too much is a nuisance. Some theaters don’t allow it all. But when it comes to smutty slang managers should not allow it: actors should be watched and chided and the limit the law regarded. Stories that suggest ill repute are especially offensive. It is quite the same with suggestive dances. The shivering bodice, twitching of the shoulders, centralized emotion and balling the jack are all sufficient reason for the revoking of any manager’s license.
And the second of the pair:
The majority of managers of today allow the actors too much liberty: for instance, I have seen the so-called comedian undertake to tell what he considers a funny joke or story. He does not get a laugh. He does not attempt to tell another, but immediately commences to “Ball the Jack,” which I consider the most vulgar movements I have ever seen attempted in public, but seemingly the managers of some of the houses stand for it and the public use their own discretion, but some managers don’t think they have a good show unless the audience makes a lot of noise and “Ball the Jack” is a noisy producer in some of the State street houses, but should Ball the Jack be accepted the same in the better houses as Salome, Texas Tommy and Tango, then I will be willing to offer an apology to all the Ball the Jackers.
And a few years later we see balling the jack making its way onto white dance floors. Puzzled by the meaning of the phrase, a reader wrote into Cincinnati’s Post, a white newspaper, of 7 August 1916 asking that question:
Dance Figure
Puzzled: What does the expression, “balling the Jack,” mean?—it refers to a figure in dancing, in which the feet are kept solid on the floor, close together, and the knees moved in a rotary movement.
As for the speed meaning, that picks up steam with World War I. At the end of the decade, we see a number of newspaper articles recording the use of ball the jack by doughboys. We see it used in the context of troops supposedly eager to go over there in the Miami Herald of 18 November 1917:
Every one here is getting impatient to “ball the jack,” for France, now that some of our “Sammies,” have lost their lives in the fight for democracy; and the 31st division or the “Dixie Flyer,” as we have nicknamed it, will undoubtedly make themselves felt when they reach the first line of trenches. They are a fine looking body of men, and the people of “Dixie” may well be proud of this division of fighting men.
There is this account of life in the trenches found in the Atlanta Journal of 29 September 1918:
Well, anyway, about 4 a.m. Sunday morning I was suddenly awakened by the noise of many guns and discovered, much to my consternation, that it was a barrage, either going over, from our guns, or coming over from Fritz’s cannon. I didn’t wait to find out, but, grabbing my shoes, balled the jack to the dugout, where nearly all the rest of the company had already arrived.
And this one from Kansas’s Emporia Gazette about post-war troops working in a sawmill in France and preparing to come home:
Yesterday the night and day crew tried to make a record run for the A.E.F. They made something of a 160,000-foot run (twenty hours), in a 20,000 capacity mill for ten hours. To see the boys “ball the jack,” believe me, the sawdust and lumber flew. They have an order for big timber, for bridges.
We see ball the jack used in reference to automobiles in this account of court testimony about a car accident in the 24 November 1920 edition of North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Journal:
Mr. Peddycord, another witness for the State, was called upon by the solicitor to estimate the speed Jeffreys was making, but the best he could guess was that "he was balling the jack." Whether or not this was a speed of ten miles per hour or sixty miles per hour could not be determined.
We’ve seen the speed sense of ball the jack used in the context of loading cargo ships, soldiers in wartime, lumber mills, and automobiles. The first known use of the phrase in the context of railroads appears in the midst of these in 1916. This is only five years after the phrase is first recorded, so the date doesn’t rule out an origin in railroad jargon, but it makes it less likely. This use comes in a 26 January 1916 notice from the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, a union:
I think that should well be explained before Congress that we have more on our hands at train time than at any other time of the day, even without the mail, but with the mail a man cannot do himself justice in trying to do all his other work and then have to lug a batch of mail half hour or longer, right when has to get to ball the jack on his other duties, but still everything has to be done, and right then.
There is this poem, presumably composed by schoolchildren that associates ball the jack with a railroad, but which could just refer to the lamb’s attempts to squirm free, resembling a suggestive dance. From Alexandria, Louisiana’s Weekly Town Talk of 2 September 1916:
The visitors were very much amused at a small “poem” that they found on one of the blackboards, and the writer will digress long enough to reproduce it:
“Mary had a little lamb,
She tied it on the track,
And every time the whistle blew
The lamb would ball the jack.”
There is this refers to a train moving at high speed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of 21 June 1920:
Knoxville Rotarians greeted the special at the depot. From there on the special “balled the jack” in an effort to make up time. Sunday morning found the special bowling the green field, along at the foothills of the famed Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
And this article from the Atlanta Journal of 3 January 1923 about a locomotive engineer retiring after fifty-four years of service that clearly establishes the term as part of railroad jargon but does not indicate how far back it goes:
He chartered a car and an engine, and the boss put me on it with orders to ball the jack, and we had a clear track and no stops to make, and we balled the jack.
What does all this tell us? The early citations of the ball the jack’s use don’t give a hint as to the underlying metaphor. An extension of the railroad term highball is certainly possible, but the existing evidence is insufficient to confirm it. We can’t even say for certain that the two senses, speed and sexually suggestive movement, have the same origin, but if one were to bet on it, one would probably say they do. Still, it’s a fascinating phrase, if only because the two senses highlight the racial division in American society as it existed in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Sources:
“Amusement Column.” Savannah Tribune (Georgia), 23 August 1913, 5/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Boosters Made Pleasant Trip.” Weekly Town Talk (Alexandria, Louisiana), 2 September 1916, 2/6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Burris, Jim and Chris Smith. “Ballin’ the Jack.” New York: Jos. W. Stern, 1913. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Byrne, W.G. “Texas Rotary Delegation Goes into Convention Unpledged.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas), 21 June 1920, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Gossip of the Stage.” Freeman (Indianapolis), 15 June 1912, 5/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. ball the jack, v.
“John M’Waters Daddy of All Engineers, Greeted by Officials and Cameramen as He Completes 54 Years at Throttle.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 3 January 1923, 8/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“In Camp and Field.” Emporia Gazette (Kansas), 4 January 1919, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Lights and Shadows in Police Court.” Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina), 24 November 1920, 10/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Little Bo Peep. “The Buffet Flats.” Chicago Defender, 8 November 1913, 4/7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Mrs. Evans’ Answers.” Post (Cincinnati, Ohio), 7 August 1916, 7/4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. ball, v.2.; September 2014, s.v. highball, v.
“Prospects Bright for Big October Movement.” Tampa Tribune (Florida), 24 September 1911, 7/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Russell, Sylvester. “Annual Stage Review.” Freeman (Indianapolis), 20 December 1913, 12/1–2.
St. John, Rex E. “Notes of Company M.” Miami Herald (Florida), 18 November 1917, 21/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Smith, W.H. “Actors and Managers of Today.” Freeman (Indianapolis), 20 December 1913, 14/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Taylor, Carl. “Letters from Our Boys Over There.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 29 September 1918, 9/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“To All Members Who Are Required to Carry United States Mail” (26 January 1916). The Railroad Telegrapher, September 1918, 34.9, 1162. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Walton, Lester A. “A Time for Action.” New York Age, 16 October 1913, 6/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Waterfront Gossip.” Tampa Morning Tribune (Florida), 27 September 1911, 11/7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, For Me and My Gal, 1942. Fair use of a single, low-resolution still from the film to illustrate the topic under discussion.