“Oh, sweet essence of buttermilk!”

In the early days of Orange Crate Art, I wrote a post to collect my favorite closing remarks from Fats Waller recordings, Fats Waller’s “Yes!” I was working from a 4-CD set from Proper Records. Now I’m making my way through Waller’s complete recordings (25 CDs from JSP). And thus I’ve hit upon an extraordinary exclamation. It appears in a trivial tune titled “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” recorded August 2, 1935, by Waller and His Rhythm (Herman Autrey trumpet; Rudy Powell, clarinet, James Smith, guitar; Charles Turner, bass; Arnold Boling, drums).

Waller recorded a considerable number of trivial tunes, whatever RCA Victor/Bluebird put in front of him. His distaste for this tune’s lyrics is clear — just listen. But there’s always fun to be had via an exclamation: “Oh, sweet essence of buttermilk! Mercy!”

It sounds like an advertising slogan gone wrong. If it is, I haven’t been able to track it down. Waller’s exclamation turns up in an expanded version in a 1941 soundie for “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” As an impromptu chorus line of attractive women takes shape, Waller exclaims ”Sweet essence of pink buttermilk, look what’s goin’ on here!”

I think that this post just acquired an R rating.

In the 1970s the 1935 exclamation, minus Oh , turned up as the title of a tune by the Great Excelsior Jazz Band. More unexpectedly, the 1935 exclamation, again minus Oh , appeared in a telegram from John F. Kennedy to his friend Lem Billings about a Christmas vacation in Palm Beach, 1935:

Kennedy offered to kick in half the cost of taking the bus. “Will pay half of bus ticket,” Jack wired. “My share thus amounting to fifteen smackeroos. Let me know when you arrive. Hello Mrs. Warren. Sweet essence of buttermilk mercy.”

David Pitts, Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship (2007).

Mrs. Warren was the Princeton University telegraph manager. Lem Billings, then a Princeton student, was Kennedy’s lifelong friend. Here’s a thoughtful commentary on their friendship. I have to assume that they both liked Fats Waller.

Related reading
All OCA Fats Waller posts (Pinboard)