WED., JANUARY 02, 2008
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Blueslore #01: Elgin Movement
by John Morthland
While writing recent columns about Robert Johnson and Harmonica Frank Floyd, I stumbled across the fact that both men professed to be jazzed by Elgin movements. “She’s got Elgin movements/ from her head down to her toes,” Johnson sings in the 1936 “Walkin’ Blues.” And on the 1972 “Movement Like an Elgin,” Harmonica Frank echoes, “She’s got movements like an Elgin/ from her head down to her toes.” Johnson, it’s worth noting, lifted the line intact from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1928 “Change My Luck Blues,” and the phrase also turns up in, among other songs, Blind Blake’s 1928 “Panther Squall Blues” and Peg Leg Howell’s 1927 “Papa Stobb Blues,” as well as such non-eMusic recordings as Blue Smitty’s 1952 “Elgin Movement” and Charley Jordan’s 1936 “Got Your Water On.” So what’s an Elgin movement?
Movement, in this case, is a noun that refers to the internal mechanics of a watch; i.e., all the wheels, springs, dowels and the like combine to make up a watch’s movement. At the time these songs were being recorded the Elgin National Watch Company, founded in 1864 in Chicago though the corporation ultimately located itself thirty miles west in Elgin, was the largest producer of watches in the country. The company had taken that crown away from Waltham Watch Company, its older rival based in Massachusetts, around the turn of the century — which was about the time that vaudevillians, such as Tony Jackson of New Orleans with “I’ve Got Elgin Movements in My Hips with Twenty Years Guarantee,” were performing the first songs to use the phrase. (Elgin was originally called the National Watch Company, but Americans routinely called its timepieces “watches from Elgin,” and then simply “Elgins,” so the name was changed a decade after incorporation.) Elgin was now manufacturing half the pocket watches in the nation — the rest were made by Waltham and a handful of smaller concerns — and in 1910 had produced its first wrist watch. Elgin’s first watch had come off the line in 1867, and the company produced 25,000 of them in 1869. By the late 1920s, that number was around two million. Watches, once affordable only to the very rich, were within the reach of many Americans, and Elgin was a symbol of the nation’s passage from a rural agrarian society to an urban industrial force.
And there were additional factors putting watches in the spotlight. During World War I, the need to keep the national railroad system running on time made the movement more important. While Elgin (and Waltham and others) had always made “railroad grade” watches for use by the transportation industry, now everybody wanted one that accurate. And this was a time when the backs of watches were still made of glass, so everybody could see the movement. Elgin advertising emphasized that in addition to being reliable, its watches made a fashion statement. Its mid-1930s ads carried the slogan, “The Watch Word for Elegance and Efficiency.” And though Marion Everett of the Old Timer Clock Shop in Austin, Texas, told me that the difference between Elgin and Waltham movements then was like the difference between Ford and Chevy today — more a matter of personal preference than of actual quality — only Elgin offered a twenty-year guarantee. Which Blind Blake acknowledged thusly: “She got Elgin movements/ and a twenty-year guarantee.” All of this helps explain why bluesmen probably sang of Elgin movement rather than Waltham movement. I’d guess that it also has something to do with the fact that Elgin was from Chicago, the mecca for Delta bluesmen.
So when Blake, Johnson and other bluesmen praised their women for Elgin movement, they were talking about the elegance of her body (which, like a watch movement, has curves) as well as how it moved when she walked, or while having sex. To make sure there was no mistake about the latter, Peg Leg Howell declared, “She got Elgin movements, make a Panther squall/ I’m so glad my sweet mama ain’t got it all.” But one of the great things about the phrase is that it’s a blues expression that can be applied to the man as well as the woman. “I got this old Elgin movement/ Make the springs tremble on your bed,” Charley Jordan boasted.
Back in 1951, Billy Ward and the Dominoes topped the black charts with “Sixty Minute Man,” one of those dirty songs that so attracted white teens, and thus turns up on most lists nominating candidates for the title of “first rock ‘n’ roll song.” But the bluesmen who sang of Elgin movement were there first with the time/sex metaphors.
Movement, in this case, is a noun that refers to the internal mechanics of a watch; i.e., all the wheels, springs, dowels and the like combine to make up a watch’s movement. At the time these songs were being recorded the Elgin National Watch Company, founded in 1864 in Chicago though the corporation ultimately located itself thirty miles west in Elgin, was the largest producer of watches in the country. The company had taken that crown away from Waltham Watch Company, its older rival based in Massachusetts, around the turn of the century — which was about the time that vaudevillians, such as Tony Jackson of New Orleans with “I’ve Got Elgin Movements in My Hips with Twenty Years Guarantee,” were performing the first songs to use the phrase. (Elgin was originally called the National Watch Company, but Americans routinely called its timepieces “watches from Elgin,” and then simply “Elgins,” so the name was changed a decade after incorporation.) Elgin was now manufacturing half the pocket watches in the nation — the rest were made by Waltham and a handful of smaller concerns — and in 1910 had produced its first wrist watch. Elgin’s first watch had come off the line in 1867, and the company produced 25,000 of them in 1869. By the late 1920s, that number was around two million. Watches, once affordable only to the very rich, were within the reach of many Americans, and Elgin was a symbol of the nation’s passage from a rural agrarian society to an urban industrial force.
And there were additional factors putting watches in the spotlight. During World War I, the need to keep the national railroad system running on time made the movement more important. While Elgin (and Waltham and others) had always made “railroad grade” watches for use by the transportation industry, now everybody wanted one that accurate. And this was a time when the backs of watches were still made of glass, so everybody could see the movement. Elgin advertising emphasized that in addition to being reliable, its watches made a fashion statement. Its mid-1930s ads carried the slogan, “The Watch Word for Elegance and Efficiency.” And though Marion Everett of the Old Timer Clock Shop in Austin, Texas, told me that the difference between Elgin and Waltham movements then was like the difference between Ford and Chevy today — more a matter of personal preference than of actual quality — only Elgin offered a twenty-year guarantee. Which Blind Blake acknowledged thusly: “She got Elgin movements/ and a twenty-year guarantee.” All of this helps explain why bluesmen probably sang of Elgin movement rather than Waltham movement. I’d guess that it also has something to do with the fact that Elgin was from Chicago, the mecca for Delta bluesmen.
So when Blake, Johnson and other bluesmen praised their women for Elgin movement, they were talking about the elegance of her body (which, like a watch movement, has curves) as well as how it moved when she walked, or while having sex. To make sure there was no mistake about the latter, Peg Leg Howell declared, “She got Elgin movements, make a Panther squall/ I’m so glad my sweet mama ain’t got it all.” But one of the great things about the phrase is that it’s a blues expression that can be applied to the man as well as the woman. “I got this old Elgin movement/ Make the springs tremble on your bed,” Charley Jordan boasted.
Back in 1951, Billy Ward and the Dominoes topped the black charts with “Sixty Minute Man,” one of those dirty songs that so attracted white teens, and thus turns up on most lists nominating candidates for the title of “first rock ‘n’ roll song.” But the bluesmen who sang of Elgin movement were there first with the time/sex metaphors.
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