Guest article: ‘Slim Gaillard’s Avocado Seed Soup and other Vout-O-Reeny delicacies’ by Sam Berlin

We’re going to cook up a fine dish, real groovy. Wrap up some fine grape leaves and chip up a little lamboroonie. Sprinkle on a little fine riceorootie and a little pepporoonie, a little peppovoutie. And sprinkle on a little saltoroonie to put the seasoning in there, that makes it really mellow. Then you take and you nail an avocado seed up in the ceiling and let it vout for a while.

Introduction to ‘Gaillard Special’, Jan 1946.

Of all the great songs written about food, and there have been many, few are like those of Bulee ‘Slim’ Gaillard. Often disregarded in mainstream histories of jazz, Gaillard is probably best remembered for inventing his own idiosyncratic ‘slanguage’, Vout (or Vout-O-Reenee). More of an approach to talking than a strict language as such, it largely consisted of adding nonsensical suffixes like oroonee or macvootee or even skoodlivootimo to words…