Music / Film & TV
Slim Gaillard
1911–1991 · jazz singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Jive singer of “Flat Foot Floogie” and inventor of the “Vout” language, often listed as Detroit-born, who spent his teenage years scraping a living in Detroit.
- Born
disputed (Detroit, Michigan; Santa Clara, Cuba; or Alabama)- Died
London, England
aged 80- Birth name
- Bulee Gaillard
- Also known as
- McVouty
- Detroit years
- late 1920s–early 1930s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Slim Gaillard's origins are famously murky. Many references list Detroit as his birthplace; he himself said he was born in Cuba and explained that people assumed Detroit “because that was the first place I got into when I got to America,” while researchers point to Alabama. By his own account he was stranded on Crete at 12 while traveling with his father, worked his way around the eastern Mediterranean, and at about 15 landed in Detroit alone. Too young for a job at Ford, he worked at a general store run by an Armenian family, who took him in, tried boxing, and during Prohibition drove a hearse loaded with whiskey for the Purple Gang. He took evening music classes, taught himself guitar and piano, and met Duke Ellington backstage when the band played Detroit. He then left for New York, where “Flat Foot Floogie” (1938) with bassist Slam Stewart made him a star of jive and hipster wordplay.
Highlights
- Birth date and place disputed; often listed as Detroit
- Arrived in Detroit alone as a teenager
- Drove a whiskey-filled hearse for the Purple Gang around 1931–1932
- Hit “Flat Foot Floogie” (1938) with Slam Stewart
- Wrote a dictionary of his invented “Vout-o-Reenee” language