Cooter Brown

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anne. I’m from Dallas.

Hi, Anne. Welcome.

Thank you.

What can we help you with?

Okay. This is a phrase, high as cootie brown.

Older African American people in the Midwest would say if they were talking about someone who had been drunk,

They’d go, they were high as cootie brown.

And where in the Midwest?

I have Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois.

Is that where you’re from?

Yeah, yeah, I’m from Nebraska.

So do you use it yourself?

Well, yeah, you know, I have.

And the thing is, is I moved down to Dallas, and I was talking to someone, and she was African-American.

And she said, oh, yeah, he was, hi, it was Cootie Brown.

And I just started busting out laughing.

I was like, oh, my God, who is this Cootie Brown?

Because you didn’t know that anyone else used it?

No, no.

Nice.

No, not at all.

It just cracked me up.

There has got to be a Cootie Brown at some point.

Cootie Brown.

That’s even fun to say.

It is.

Who is Cootie Brown?

That’s fantastic.

I have a little bit of data for you.

I don’t have the ultimate answer.

The ultimate answer, the one that you came for, I don’t have.

And that is, who was Cootie Brown?

Oh, darn.

I know.

It’ll be a mystery movie at some point in the future.

Watch for it on PBS, I’m sure.

But you might be interested to know that most people actually say Cooter Brown and not Cootie Brown.

Yeah, have you heard that one?

No, no, I haven’t.

So you’ll have a little better luck searching the Internet or book archives or newspaper archives with Cuda Brown,

But you’ll find them both.

And the earliest that I know that this was used was in the 1930s in an Atlanta newspaper.

So we know that it’s got some roots.

And as it appears in the 30s and 40s and 50s, it’s almost always in Black English.

So this is an expression that is mainly exclusive to Black English and is not really used by white folks.

Okay.

Yeah, interesting, right?

And it’s so prominent that in Langston Hughes, in one of his collections of works called Simple Speaks His Mind,

You know, Langston Hughes had all these stories about a character called Simple.

These are dialogues of a fellow in Harlem.

He uses that phrase, and it first appeared in one of his short stories in 1944.

So pretty quickly after it first appears in the newspaper, Langston Hughes is already using it in such a way that he’s able to spread it to his audience.

I’m sure he must have had some influence of popularizing the term.

So it means somebody who’s really drunk.

Yeah. Well, it’s not just drunk. That’s the thing.

So people say drunk as cooter brown or high as cooter brown.

But they’ll also say as dead as cooter brown or as fast as cooter brown.

And I’ve even seen it as fertile as cooter brown.

No way.

Which is strange because we don’t usually call men fertile.

That’s great.

So Cooter Brown has become this metaphorical fellow who is all sorts of extremes, right?

Drunk and fertile and dead.

Yeah.

Well, if he’s drunk and fertile, he’s got a lot of kids.

That’s why he’s dead.

Which is why he’s dead.

Yeah, which is why he’s dead, exactly.

A number of exes got a hold of him and let him have the business end of the gun.

Oh, man.

But we don’t know enough about Cooter Brown, frankly.

I think Cooter Brown is a story waiting to be told.

That is.

It is definitely a story waiting to be told.

If I ever, I’ve got to tell you, if I ever find the true origins of this fellow,

If I found out his roots, I’ll let you know.

Please do.

If I don’t find it, maybe I’ll just make up a story.

And we’ll put that one around as if it were true.

This is great.

Interesting stuff, right?

Well, thank you guys so much.

I love the show.

Oh, we’re glad to have you along, Anne.

Thanks for calling.

Okay, bye-bye.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Interesting.

If you know anything about Cooter Brown or Cootie Brown,

Or if it’s something that you say or your grandpa says,

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or tell us the story in email to words@waywordradio.org.