Dumb question: What's a yardbird?

Poststructural Pub
1

Of course I know The Yardbirds of 60s fame, and never thought twice about their name, but this morning I was half watching an old Abbott & Costello movie and at one point Costello says to Abbott, “What am I, a yardbird?!?!” And suddenly it dawned on me I had no idea what a yardbird is - at least not by that term.

Susan

2

I’ve always taken it to mean an ‘inmate’ out in the exercise yard.

3

Yep…

God bless your innocence Sue…

Slan,
D. :laughing:

4

Innocence, hah! Well, you google it and you get mostly this type of thing:

You know, yard stuff.

And not knowing that much about prison inmates (amazingly enough), it just wasn’t something I had right off the top of my head. Innocence…hah!

Susan

5

LOL! I wouldn’t have known either, Susan (although I suppose if I had thought about it, I may have, who knows). But all I could think about was the 60’s group too. So you’re not the only one. :wink:

6

And here I was gonna say a pink flamingo… or a tired old hippie-era gal…

7

A “yardbird” is a chicken. (People used to keep them in their yards.) The term later became used for the inmate in the prison yard. It was also jazz great Charlie Parker’s nickname (often shortened to “Bird”). His official [u]website[/u] has this to say about why he was called “Yardbird”:

Nickname origin: There are two stories.

  1. He lived “free as a bird.”
  2. When touring with Jay McShann, they accidentally hit a chicken (a yardbird) with their car and Parker made them stop to pick it up so he could have his landlady cook it for him.

Cheers,
John

8

9

See, even the Yardbirds have lawn ornaments on their website. No wonder people are confused!

Susan

10

Susan, I always wondered the same thing.

11

You mean yardbird isn’t another name for a Guinea?

12

Those stories could both contain a grain of truth but, as they stand, are completely contradictory. A yardbird is an imprisoned animal and not ‘free as a bird’ at all. My conjecture is that the second strory is closer to the truth as regards origins and the first as regards eventual connotations.

There seems to be no doubt that the nickname was originally yardbird and he himself composed and recorded a tune called Yardbird Suite in the mid 40s. (Another origins myth is that he acquired the nickname because he had a voracious appetite for fried chicken, still another that he called chickens yardbirds which his musician friends regarded as a bit quaint and hick).

Later it got shortened to ‘Bird’ and then acquired the contradictory connotation. He went along with it composing tunes with names like ‘Bird Gets the Worm’ and so on.

13

the story I’ve heard is the Parker got the name Yardbird because of striped suits that he wore reminded some of his colleagues of prison garb. I’ve never heard the other stories.

Steve