Pigmeat Markham: How a Comedy Catchphrase Birthed Rap

The DNA of rap music doesn't start at a 1970s Bronx block party. It starts with a comedian in a graduation cap smacking people with a balloon. Pigmeat Markham's 'Here Comes the Judge' may be the earliest hip-hop record.This episode charts the astonishing five-decade arc of Dewey 'Pigmeat' Markham, from the dirt roads of 1920s burlesque tent shows to network television and an accidental musical revolution, tracing one of the most overlooked through-lines in American pop culture.His apprenticeship in Bessie Smith's traveling revue, where he learned vocal projection and rhythmic delivery as survivalThe complicated reality of a Black performer wearing blackface for Black audiences at the Apollo TheaterThe 'Here Comes the Judge' routine, its courtroom subversion, graduation cap, and balloon, as catharsis and social commentaryWhy Sammy Davis Jr. had to perform the bit on Laugh-In first before NBC would hire Markham himselfThe 1968 single that hit number 19 with boastful rhymes over a funk beat, later sampled by Big Audio Dynamite II