Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
JT Money featuring Sole - Who Dat
In the sports world, only the IOC surpasses the NFL when it comes to the number of copyright lawsuits filed against its fanbase. It was no surprise, then, to hear last week that the NFL had threatened legal action against t-shirt makers in New Orleans who were selling merchandise with the Super Bowl-bound Saints' catchphrase of "Who Dat." The NFL claimed that they owned the rights to "Who Dat," a phrase that gained mainstream recognition in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina had the whole nation focusing on New Orleans, and football fans in particular focused on the city's legion of Saints fans who referred to themselves as "Who Dat Nation."
The absurd state of copyright law that allows any entity to legally own the rights to a phrase as generic as "Who Dat" (or Cincinatti's similar "Who Dey") aside, I still thought there was no way the NFL or New Orleans had any grounds for the claim as the above JT Money song came out in 2000, several years before I had heard "Who Dat" used in reference to the Saints. Little did I know just how much history - quite a bit of which was wrapped up in cringe worthy minstrel performances - there was behind the phrase.
According to Wikipedia:
The chant of "Who Dat?" originated in minstrel shows and vaudeville acts of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was then taken up by jazz and big band performers in the 1920s and 30s.
The first reference to "Who Dat?" can be found in the 19th Century. A featured song in E.E. Rice's "Summer Nights" is the song "Who Dat Say Chicken In dis Crowd", with lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. A common tag line in the days of Negro minstrel shows was: "Who dat?" answered by "Who dat say who dat?" Many different blackfaced gags played off that opening. Vaudeville performer Mantan Moreland was known for the routine. Another example is "Swing Wedding," a rarely shown 1930s Harman-Ising cartoon musical, which caricatured Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Ethel Waters, and the Mills Brothers as frogs in a swamp performing minstrel show jokes and jazz tunes. The frogs repeatedly used the phrase "who dat?"
Keeping with the theme of this post and the screwed up state of copyright law in this country, the Swing Wedding cartoon referenced in the above quote, which came out almost 80 years ago, is still not in the public domain and is nowhere to be found on youtube or any other video sharing site. In fact, companies like MGM continue to hide their early 20th century cartoons behind the protection of copyright due to the objectionable nature of much of their content. The best I could come up with is this blog post which has screen captures of the cartoon, built around a "gag" of one of the jazz musicians turning his trumpet into a syringe to inject himself with heroin. Certainly not the first cartoon to engage in racial stereotypes, but hardly an auspicious start for the "Who Dat" phenomenon nonetheless.
An apparently common scene in the minstrel skits of the '30s featured the sudden appearance of a ghost, with the terrified black characters calling out "Who dat?" The earliest clip I could find online of the phrase being used in musical form is from the Marx brothers' 1937 film A Day at the Races, which featured Whitey's Lindy Hoppers dancing to chants of "Who Dat":
Whitey's Lindy Hoppers - Who Dat (from A Day at the Races)
The phrase was then allegedly picked up during World War 2 by American fighter pilots, who would say "Who dat say who dat?" to break radio silence. I say allegedly, as the only references I could find to that were in the Wikipedia article itself and a few message board threads referencing the Wikipedia article. From there, the phrase entered the sports lexicon:
[S]ome claim it began with Southern University fans either in the late 1960s or early 1970s and went "Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Jags" - Southern University being nicknamed the Jaguars. Another claim is that around the same time it began at St. Augustine High School, a historically African-American all boys Catholic high school in New Orleans, and then spread to the New Orleans Public Schools. Another claim is that the cheer originated at Patterson High School in Patterson, Louisiana (home of Saints running back Dalton Hilliard). In the late 1970s fans at Alcorn State University and Louisiana State University picked up on the cheer.
By 1983, the New Orleans Saints organization officially adopted it during the tenure of coach Bum Phillips, and Aaron Neville (along with local musicians Sal and Steve Monistere and Carlo Nuccio) recorded a version of "When the Saints Go Marching In" that incorporated the chant (performed by a group of Saints players) that became a major local hit, due in part to the support of sportscaster Ron Swoboda and the fact that Saints fans had been using the chant already.
Here is the Aaron Neville version of "Who Dat" with the 1983 New Orleans Saints:
Aaron Neville and the N.O. Saints - When the Saints Go Marching In / Who Dat
In more recent years, the phrase has appeared on the occasional hip hop song. Both Juvenile ("I'm a Saints fan that's why I say Who Dat") and Lil Wayne ("Who Dat say they gon' beat Lil Wayne") have used it in their lyrics, while Jeezy devoted an entire song to the phrase:
Young Jeezy featuring Shawty Redd - Who Dat
Not surprisingly, with the Saints just a few days away from their first ever appearance in the Super Bowl, several local musicians have put together their own versions of the Who Dat theme. Easily the best of the bunch comes from New Orleans emcee K. Gates:
K. Gates - Black & Gold (Who Dat!)
It's worth noting that earlier today the NFL announced that they were easing up on their legal threats and New Orleans merchants will now be able to sell shirts with the phrase "Who Dat" as long as they do not also include the Saints or NFL logo on them. If you really need to have a golden Fleur de Lis as the background to your "Who Dat" t-shirt, however, you'll have to shell out $35 for the officially licensed version.
2/02/2010 8:30:51 PM posted by Fresh