Entry · catalog no. 1064
canary
/ /kəˈnɛəri/ /kuh-NAIR-ee
noun · northeast · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A woman who sings with a band. Calloway listed her simply: girl vocalist.
“Every big band needed a canary out front.”
Origin & Attribution
Black big-band culture, 1930s. The word marked a real position in the orchestra — the featured singer who fronted an otherwise male ensemble. Documented in Calloway's 1938 dictionary and common in Black press coverage of the swing era; it fell out of use as the singers who held the job, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald among them, outgrew the frame it put them in.
1930s
In use in Black big-band culture
1938
Recorded in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
northeast · 1930s
Spoken by
Black swing-era big bands and Black press
$CANARYThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
25/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1938
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway — Hepster's Dictionary: A Guide to the Language of Jive — book · 1938
submitted
See also