Big Butter And Egg Man

Now she wants...a butter an egg man
From way out in the west
She wants somebody ... who's workin' all day
So she's got money ... when she wants to play

 

Big Butter And Egg Man was written by Percy Venable in 1926. There was a time when dairy famers, particularly in America, were clearly well-off. In a paper by George B. Frisvold it states "At the beginning of the 20th Century, the U.S. dairy industry was comprised of millions of small-scale operations producing for their own or for very local consumption. By the end of the 20th Century, the industry was dominated by large-scale producers marketing products via large cooperatives. Improvements in transportation, advances in animal breeding and feeding technologies, and scale economies have allowed the industry to be more competitive on global markets, where there is now active international trade in dairy products. Major government programs to support dairy farm income date back to Depression-era problems facing the industry. Federal programs to support dairy income led to recurring problems of overproduction. .....Yet the industry faces many challenges: greater scrutiny over greenhouse gas emissions, secular declines in milk prices and U.S. per capita milk consumption, reduced viability of small-scale operations, and the rise of plant-based milk substitutes."

 

The situation has also changed in the UK where in 2012, The Telegraph reported that: "Hundreds of dairy farmers blockaded milk processing plants last night to protest against low prices, leaving them receiving less than the cost of production." There was  a time when young children in the UK had free milk at school every morning in a glass 'milk bottle' a third of a pint in size. They would drink the milk through a straw during morning break and on cold winter mornings, warm it up first on the large, school cast-iron radiators. Those were days when the milk was whole fat and would have a creamy band at the top ('top-of-the-milk') that was a 'treat' on breakfast cereals. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher abolished free school milk in 1970.

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So the term “Butter and Egg Man” originally referred to merchants who dealt with eggs and/or butter. In 1925, a play was staged entitled The Butter And Egg Man by George S. Kaufman. It was about a rich man who came to New York "with plans to liberally and exuberantly spend his money on wine, women, and song." Wikipedia tells us: "This play was a big hit and contributed to the popularization of the term. “Butter and Egg Man” came to mean a rich man who freely and ostentatiously spent his money on women. .....  The lyrics to the song describe a woman who wanted a butter and egg man to treat her well and let her play so she doesn't need to work all day. After the popularization of the term, some merchants who sold eggs and butter were upset because it painted them in a negative light. One such merchant, from Minneapolis, even sued the theater and its star for vilifying the hardworking merchants, claiming that when the star sang about them, she did so with “certain tones and gestures to convey that all dealers in butter and egg were men of immoral and licentious character”. 

 

Record producer Percy Venable wrote Big Butter And Egg Man specifically for Louis Armstrong and singer May Alix. Apparently Earl Hines claimed that Alix would often tease young Louis during performances – he was quite shy and had a crush on May. There were times when Louis, looking at May, would forget the lyrics and the band would shout "Hold it, Louis! Hold it."

 

Here's Louis and the Hot Five playing and singing the number with May Alix