While I think we did a thread on this at one time, I can’t seem to find it. Perhaps I’m confusing boards.
I’m sure everyone knows what I’m describing—two sports players rasing a hand and slapping them together in congratulations. Of course, these days, it could be anyone.
The phrase can only be traced(so far) in print back to 1980, in an interview with Derek Smith of the Louisville (basketball) Cardinals. He claims to have invented the term.
Posters over at the American Dialect Society Mailing List suggest that it was a not-uncommon form of “greeting” or “handshake” among African-Americans in the Viet-Nam era and perhaps was popularized on a tv show(such as Good Times).
Bottom line----can any poster here come up with a memory of a pre-1980 occurence of “high five.” Even a print description of the gesture would be of help.
I remember back in the early 70s there was a “slap me five” or “slide me five”. That wasn’t the high-five though, it was more of a handshake where your hands just slid by each other. The high-five started in sports, either basketball or baseball, and it was a black-only thing to begin with. Around the early 80s, everyone was doing the high-five. That’s just from my experience, others may remember it differently.
Supposedly, in the 1968 movie “The Producers,” Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder do a “high five.” I’m going to the library tomorrow to get out the movie. But, if true, the 1968 date is pretty early.
Also, a poster at the ADS suggested that the Washington Redskins had a group of players in the 1970’s who would gather in the endzone after a touchdown, and “high five” each other as a group.
In college c. 1970-71 I recall doing “slap me five” in different ways. We would say “slap me high” (the usual) and do a high slap, or “slap me low” for a low slap. I don’t recall using the specific phrase “high five” though, although we definitely used to do it. (One guy as a joke used to do “slap me five the hard way,” using two fingers on one hand and three on the other.)
I have a copy of “The Producers” on tape. I’d be glad to run through it tomorrow and check, sam, and save you the trip to the library.
This speedster (Glenn Burke), who led three minor leagues in steals, is sometimes given credit for inventing the “high five.” After his ML days, he participated in the Bay Area Gay Games.
FROM THE BASEBALL CHRONOLOGY
» October 2, 1977: Dusty Baker homers in his final AB of the season during a 6–3 loss to the Astros. It is Baker’s 30th home run of the year, enabling him to join teammates Steve Garvey (33), Reggie Smith (32), and Ron Cey (30) in making the Dodgers the first team ever to boast four 30-HR hitters in one season. When he crosses the plate he is greeted by on-deck batter Glenn Burke, who raises his hands and Baker matches him, allegedly the first high five in history.
IIRC, as an elementary school student, somewhere around '75 or '76, I remember my older brother teaching me the following joke:
He says, **“Give me Five.” ** I slap my brothers hand
**“Up high.” ** I would have to jump to hit my brothers hand, essentially giving him a high five.
**“Down low.” ** When I try to slap his lowered hand, he moves it quickly out of the way and says "You’re too slow!"
Then he says **“Give me five.” ** I slap his hand. "Up high" I give him a high five.
**“Down low.” ** I am able to catch his lowered hand and slap it with a great deal of satisfaction.
Then he says **“in the hole” ** I stick my finger in the hole that he has made with his fingers and he says **“Thanks for cleaning my toilet bowl!” **
Can anyone else remember this joke who is older than me?
As a side question, Is there anyone else who grew up in the 70’s whose brother would not let them go outside until they were able to “snatch the pebble from my hand”? I really hated that.
I have a tape of a radio show from (likely) the 1940s featuring blues/pop singer Mildred Bailey and a black vocal group whose name escapes me at the moment. At one point the radio announcer talks about their “peculiar Harlem greeting” and they go into a song I assume is called “Gimmie Some Skin” because that phrase is repeated ad nauseum in the chorus. What they describe could be a high five, but could also be the up high/down low variant. Bailey died in 1951, that and the vocal style suggests '40s to me.
My assumption is that variants of this go back a long way in African-American culture. Tracing it could be darn near impossible. Tracing usage of the term ‘high five’ in sports writing could be easier.
And I do remember the ‘snatch a pebble from my hand’ thing! Thanks (?) for bringing back memories of schoolyard bullies and the like. Somewhere there’s a PhD in Folkore and Folklife waiting for the person who can document all of this…
Yep, variants go back a long ways. “Gimme some skin” can be found in print in 1940. It was such a universal phrase, that the Andrews sisters had a hit in 1941 called that. And, I too, have found early 40’s cites that specifically attribute it to Harlem (in the 30’s or earlier).
I’m going to have to look into that Andrews Sisters song! If the song I described is a cover version, that’ll be the umpteenth song I had pegged as having ‘organic’ or ‘folk’ roots that actually came out of Tin Pan Alley. :smack:
Does this not derive from the 1972 TV series “Kung Fu” when the student Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine) could not leave the monastery until he could snatch a pebble from the hand of the abbot? Or does it have some precedent in Chinese folklore?
I remember in the 1970s we’d say, “Gimme five!” The person would slap your hand, around wasit level. Then you’d slap the other person in the face and say, “Keep the change!”
