‘Nobody Here but Us Chickens!’ by Louis Jordan (Wikipedia)
A number-one on the Billboard R&B chart from 1946.
Apparently, this phrase originated in the early 1900s as a racist joke about a slave stealing chickens. An excerpt here from ‘Everybody’s Magazine’ from 1908:
A Southerner, hearing a great commotion in his chicken-house one dark night, took his revolver and went to investigate.
“Who’s there?” he sternly demanded, open the door.
No answer.
“Who’s there? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”
A trembling voice from the farthest corner: “’Deed, sah, dey ain’t nobody hyah ’ceptin’ us chickens.”
So, yeah: pretty racist and awful!
In a radio show excerpt that I listened to (https://www.waywordradio.org/us-chickens/), the hosts suggest that by the time it had been turned into a hit song in 1946, it had lost all of that context. I think that’s an awfully convenient assertion for two white people to make over a hundred years later!
