, hominy Stompers from Murfreesboro, Tennessee:Jake Leg Stompers - St. James Infirmary
I saw them 15 or 20 years ago, lots of fun. The lineup has since changed, at least with a new female lead singer.
Website
That source is a surprise. Dan Baum is an old friend that I've lost touch with. He also wrote this excellent book:JAKE LEG - A SHORT HISTORY: Paralysis brought on by drinking jake, Jamaican ginger extract, a patent medicine. It is believed that the malady was first discovered in Oklahoma City by Dr. Ephraim Goldfain in February 1930. "The first person to record a connection between jake and the paralysis may have been Ishmon Bracey, the black blues singer who cut 'Jake Liquor Blues' in Grafton, Wisconsin, in March of 1930." Jake leg "afflicted enough souls to instigate an entire subject of folk music. Blacks and whites were affected. It rendered men impotent. And it was no longer inspiring musicians by 1934, which meant it was a cataclysmic but discrete event." What had turned the harmless patent medicine into a crippler was the addition of tri-ortho-cresyl-phosphate, TOCP, a "plasticizer" used to keep synthetic materials from becoming brittle. This was during Prohibition and the Treasury Department tackled "the problem of people getting too much pleasure from patent-medicine tippling by ordering that the solids in fluid extracts be doubled." TOCP was believed to be harmless and was used to "boost the solids."
--"Annals of Epidemiology: Jake Leg: How the blues diagnosed a medical mystery," by Dan Baum. The New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2003, Page 50.
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
Despite being pretty well versed on the subject, I was shocked and appalled every few pages.
More on the topic from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_g ... neuropathy
Idk about jake leg, but stomping was irresistible while the band was playing.... In 1930, large numbers of Jake users began to find they were unable to use their hands and feet. Some victims could walk, but they had no control over the muscles which would normally have enabled them to point their toes upward. Therefore, they would raise their feet high with the toes flopping downward, which would touch the pavement first followed by their heels. The toe first, heel second pattern made a distinctive "tap-click, tap-click" sound as they walked. This very peculiar gait became known as the jake walk and the jake dance and those afflicted were said to have jake leg, jake foot, or jake paralysis. Additionally, the calves of the legs would soften and hang down and the muscles between the thumbs and fingers would atrophy....
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, Useless. So much for "Ignored". You fail again. Plus, Useless, you've been busted too many times for anyone to believe you're not reading my posts, anyhow. It's just your excuse for cowering. Awww.
