Origin of the Bump and Grind

Factual Questions
1

Ok, so this might be a tough one but I was recently reading the excellent book “Confederacy of Dunces” for the first time and the phrase “bumped and ground” was used in a description of a character’s attempt at doing an erotic dance. Here is the specific passage:

Now, being very familiar with the current usage of “bump & grind” to refer to an overly sexual type of dance (thanks R. Kelly!), the use of similar terms in the book made me curious as to the origin of the phrase. The book itself was written in the mid-60’s (though not published until 1980) but I doubt it was the first to describe a dance in this way.

2

I don’t know, I would place it in 20th century, likely between wars, but maybe later. Certainly no later than 1950.

3

It’s how a strip tease works - the bump is the forward thrust of the hips (less so the backward thrust of buttocks), the grind the rotation of the hips, thus the bump and grind. Strip joints are sometimes Before my time called grindhouses.

4

There is a reference here to 1940, but nothing to point to. Other references online by strippers and musicians talked about the 1930s and 1940s, but they were recent references, nothing from the time period. The phrase was well known as referring to an erotic dance in the 1960s from my own memory.

5

The use of the words bump and grind separately to indicate sexual suggestive acts both go back to the 1600’s. They don’t seem to come together until the 1930s in the US. As said, stripper, burlesque acts.

6

The 1940 reference is apparently to American Mercury magazine, mentioning “the best bump and grind artiste in burleycue show business.” From context, it’s apparent that everyone was supposed to be familiar with the phrase.

I don’t see an earlier mention in Google Books, but what’s interesting is that bump and grind is a much older expression commonly applied to ships.

Other authors use the phrase for trucks, cars, railroads, and icebergs. Grindhouse doesn’t appear until long after 1940, so it’s likely that the older, common descriptive phrase was used facetiously for the movements of burleycue dancers.

7

No reason for me to be right, but in the maritime examples above, I see it simply as two separate actions described, not as a phrase describing a specific action IOW it’s bump and grind not bump and grind.

8

The burleycue bump and grind are two different actions. Here’s a how to bump and grind video that states the the bumps are the sudden lateral movements of the hips while the grind is the circular motion of the pelvis. Spoiler box since even this PG version is probably not good work viewing. A non-PG version might substitute a pelvic thrust but that’s still combining separate motions.

http://www.howcast.com/videos/507583-How-to-Bump-and-Grind-like-a-Burlesque-Dancer-How-to-Dance-Burlesque

9

Thank you Exapno. Even the modern discussions made it sound like ‘bump and grind’ was quite well established in the early days of burlesque.

Mention of the bumps, but not the grinds was in the stageplay Gypsy: A Musical Fable, You Gotta Have a Gimmick, carried over into the later film. That’s 1959, not really applicable, but I’ll throw in a gratuitous link to one of the few things that would get me to a Broadway show. Not NSFW for some maybe: You Gotta Have a Gimmickfrom the 1962 movie Gypsy

10

The bump & grind as a dance style has its origins as a vernacular version of belly dancing, made popular in the US by a belly dancing exhibit at the 1893 World’s Fair.

11

“The burleycue bump and grind are two different actions”

Oh thanks - you mean as I explained in detail in post #3.

in the post you responded to, I was positing that - well, I already posited what I was positing. To see why your post is a non sequitor, re-read post #7.

12

You’re right, I had forgotten your post up there. I apologize. I’m still mystified how you manage to turn either usage into one thing instead of two.

If I had remembered that post, though, I would have made this correction earlier. Grindhouse in print doesn’t appear until about 1960, where it refers to a type of movie theater or movie genre just as it does today. I don’t think strip joints were ever commonly called grindhouses.

The only evidence I have in favor comes from the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque, based on Gyspy Rose Lee’s novel The G-String Murders. The burlesque theater in the movie is referred to as a grindhouse. There’s a huge difference between a burlesque theater and a strip joint as we know them today. Additionally, the burlesque theaters often showed movies between performances to give them time to rest, so a grindhouse may even then be the movie aspect rather than the stripper aspect, or more probably both. That’s assuming that Hollywood got the slang right. That’s a low-profit bet.

13

“I’m still mystified how you manage to turn either usage into one thing instead of two.”
By the sound to my ear for one. But I am mystified myself which is why I satted plainly in opening that there was no reason why I should be right in my interpretation.

So a stripper refers to a burlesque house as a grindhouse - it is not your contention that Burlesque house in the 40s did not include strippers is it? That it was used in such manner in popular media seems to support that it was not an esoteric or unknown term.

14

I thought I put this in my last post re usage as one thing.

Because it is one thing in stripping. Strippers do a bump and grind, not a bump to the exclusion of the grind or vice versa.

A ship can bump into a rock and then one subsequently hears the ship grinding along. However a ship can also bump into a rock and stay impaled or grounded (not grinded). Likewise one may hear the hull grinding over a sand bar with no real bump preceding.

Again, if you are watching a stripper you are going to see bump and grind not one or the other.

15

Life Magazine, April 14, 1941

16

If you’ve ever run aground, you’d know that the two tend to go together – just as in burlesque.

17

They can do them seperately, and exclusively. The phrase as a whole, bump and grind, refers to the fact that both moves are usually included in a stripper’s routine, but each one is a distinctive move by itself as well.

18

My contention is that a grindhouse is not a strip joint.

Burlesque is a larger and far more encompassing term of art than strip shows. The evolution - or devolution - of burlesque to come to mean only a strip show with comic intervals and later on only the strip show itself is even more complicated than that short page indicates. But neither grindhouse nor grind show was ever commonly used to mean burlesque at any time.

Strippers make all sorts of moves. They can do bumps without grinds and vice versa. They can do bumps with other moves or grinds with other moves. When you follow one with the other you get a bump and grind. It’s like shave and a haircut. Two things that can be separate but are better when one is combined with the other.

19

It seems to me that any individual mention of the words “bump and grind” could be a coincidental pairing of two words that aren’t that unusual. If I were going to find the beginning of a memetic phrase, I wouldn’t look for an individual use so much as a grouping of the same usage in time. Therefore, it is best to start with Google N-Grams, which doesn’t show a repetitive thread of that phrase until 1957:

So, even though there might be an article that, at some point, says “bump and grind,” unless it says “the kids are saying bump and grind,” I wouldn’t necessarily view that as the beginning of the phrase.

I would look for articles or song lyrics specifically in 1957 to find the beginning of this one.

20

Your link doesn’t show anything because you put quotes around “bump and grind” so ngrams looks for the phrase with quotes. That’s different from almost every other search engine, including Google. You also start the search with 1950, which is way too late.

But the 1940 and 1941 links in posts #6 and #15 are to Google Books, so it’s certain that the phrase is older than 1957. And references from the 1950s are plentiful.

Love and Mrs. Candy - Page 19

Robert Tallant - 1953 - ‎Snippet view
“Henry, why don’t you get Noonie Belle an aspirin to take with her beer,” she suggested. “I don’t want no aspirin,” said Noonie Belle. “My head don’t hurt. Look, I gotta idea. Do you think Philandra Fazende would give me some lessons? I mean in dancing and stuff like that. When I met her on Cairo Street one day she told me how she used to be a big star.” “Miss Fazende has imagination,” said Mrs. Candy quietly. “I can do a bump and grind,” said Noonie Belle, "and I can do cartwheels.

Saturday Review - Volume 36 - Page 28

1953 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
… was evidently not fully sure that Miss Monroe and Miss Russell could dance — really dance, that is — so he has mainly kept them to burlesque-type routines. To learn these, the vital statistics continue to inform us, the girls were sent to some downtown Los Angeles burlesque houses to pick up what pointers were needed. There they quickly learned how to parade, bump, and grind. However, censorship codes protect us from the true parade, bump, and grind of the burlesque show.

Fortnight: The Newsmagazine of California - Volumes 10-11

1951 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
The B**ump and Grind Business **First of a Series Explaining Why Burlesque Is Becoming Los Angeles’ Major Entertainment CIVIC AFFAIRS The Europeans By Clement Reicher PEOPLE BUSINESS, INDUSTRY. Only 18 short months ago there was one burlesque theatre in Los Angeles. At last count there were three theatres. 23 nightclubs in the County featuring strip shows and new shows mushrooming each week. While the more sedate members of show business refer to this trend …

Time - Page 34

Briton Hadden, ‎Henry Robinson Luce - 1952 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
It was heaped high with a weird mixture of pornography, childishness and sentimentality — mild glamour shots like those advertising Chicago burlesque bars: Kodachrome nudes complete with pocket viewers; trick photographs that could be squeezed to make a fan dancer bump and grind. There were also pictures of Queen Narriman as a bride. Near the royal bed stood two stacks of well-thumbed U.S. comics. In the dressing. room were 100 suits. 50 canes. 75 pairs of binoculars and …