Entry · catalog no. 5002
the joint is jumping
/ /ðə ˈdʒɔɪnt ɪz ˈdʒʌmpɪŋ/ /thuh JOYNT iz JUM-ping
phrase · Harlem / national · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
Of a place, especially a party or nightspot: to be at peak energy, with music, dancing, and a crowd feeding off each other.
“By midnight the rent party had spilled into the hallway — the joint was jumping.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem, 1930s. 'Joint' was already the going word for a spot — a club, a flat, an after-hours room — and 'jumping' was swing-era talk for music with drive. The full phrase belongs to the world of Harlem rent parties and cutting sessions, and it was fixed in the record by Fats Waller, who cut 'The Joint Is Jumpin'' with His Rhythm for Victor on October 7, 1937, with lyrics by Andy Razaf and J. C. Johnson. The record is practically a field recording of a rent party, complete with shouted warnings about the law at the door. Swing's national craze carried the phrase to white audiences almost immediately, but its address was 133rd Street before it was anywhere else.
1937
Fats Waller & His Rhythm record 'The Joint Is Jumpin'' for Victor
1940s
Phrase spreads nationally with the swing craze
1978
Revived on Broadway in Ain't Misbehavin'
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem / national · 1930s
Spoken by
Harlem partygoers, rent-party hosts, swing musicians and their audiences
$THEJOIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Standard89 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1937
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.
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Citations & Sources
■
The Joint Is Jumpin', Fats Waller & His Rhythm — 1937
song · verified
■
+ Cite a sourceInternet Archive audio of the 1937 Victor recording
archive · verified
See also