1955
LATER ALLIGATOR * BOBBY CHARLES * LONDON 8247 * UK
Robert Charles Guidry, a.k.a Bobby Charles wrote and originally recorded the song Later Alligator (Chess #1609) which became known to millions as See You Later, Alligator (as seen on this 78 RPM test pressing) after it was covered by Bill Haley and His Comets (see below). Guidry took the expression 'see you later, alligator' a colloquial term in use at the time- possibly originating from somewhere near to his home town of New Orleans, who's inhabitants would have been familiar with the reptile - and crafted this song around it, incorporating other phrases that were common currency on the streets of the big city's, but little known elsewhere in the world.
Language is very much a class ridden entity, its 'mode of production' and official use is rigorously controlled in Britain by power elites: in academia, the law, state bureaucracy, commerce and most officiously in the mass media (BBC). These various agency's, along with the church, have always used grammar as both a tool for their own benefit and a weapon with which to control, punish and exclude the masses. Yet while the laws and structure of grammar continue to be a force of power, much of the poetry, invention and creativity that keeps language alive comes from words, phrases, and general use by the very people that its laws oppress the most; notably, in the English speaking West, from the Jamaican, Afro American, criminals the services and all other manner of communities where like mined people share a common bond..
During the past several years the English speaking population of Britain have been subject to the particularly pernicious use of language as a force for control, one that is exemplified in George Orwell's book 1984, where the power elites provide a medium of expression (political correctness) for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of = IngSoc (English Socialism, in 1984) but to make all other modes of thought impossible. The underlying theory of Newspeak being that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought, and if one persists to think the not-thinkable, say; "Identity cards increase the power and reach of the state and the profits of the multinationals", this will lead to the act of 'thoughtcrime'. Of course this imposition of language, although proselytised and implemented most fervently in the UK, since the book was published, by the left - who ironically were themselves very much in denial that Orwell referred to them and always preferred the idea that he was talking about fascism - New Speak has now become the remit of both, what was historically known as, the left and the right, more generally known now as Neo Liberalism.
N.B. When I wrote this ten years ago people were not then being arrested for 'hate speech'. Now, in 2019, it has gone way beyond just 'thought crime' or 'hate speech' for which people are being arrested on an almost daily basis, now, just recently we have had an incident of 'face crime', whereby a young man from a Catholic school in the US was accused (wrongly) of 'smirking' at a member of a protected 'victim' community, and in the ensuing trial by media very nearly had his life wrecked for what was called having a 'smug' look on his face. This (face) 'crime' is in Orwell's 1984. Look it up.
SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR * BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS * BRUNSWICK 05530 * UK