Baldy Sour

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Alice from Iron Mountain, Michigan.

Hello, Alice.

Hi, Alice. What’s up?

Well, I grew up on the north side of Chicago.

And when someone came with a new haircut,

A child came with a new haircut,

We would stand around him and point fingers

And say, baldy sour, baldy sour.

And I thought it was a neighborhood thing,

But then I talked to my friend

Who grew up on the south side of Chicago,

And I said, do you know what a baldy sour is?

And she said, sure, it’s a kid with a new haircut.

So my question to you is, where did it come from and how far did it go?

Oh, I love this. Baldy sour.

So it’s just the kid with the haircut or the haircut itself or both?

Well, the kid with the haircut, it was teasing, you know, and laughing.

And was it a particular kind of haircut?

No, it was just a short haircut.

Now, this was 80 years ago.

80 years ago?

Yes, and kids had short haircuts in those days.

Wait, so we’re talking the 1930s?

Yeah.

1930s, 1940s?

40s, yeah.

40s, okay.

Wow, baldy sour.

All right, there’s not a lot on this, but I love this term,

And we’ve got some listeners who now have their ears perked up

Because it’s common enough that you do find it used in fiction and writing,

But rare enough that I know of no dictionary of slang or dialect

Or regional expressions that includes it.

Not a one.

Wow.

And you will find it again and again from as far back as the 1940s,

Which is why I want to nail that down with you,

To mean a crew cut or a very short haircut or a flat top.

A short hair?

Yeah, very short.

And you’ll find again and again people talking about joining the army

And lining up for their baldy sour that they’re going to get from the barber.

And you’ll find kids talking about having lice in school and coming home,

And their mom or their dad give him the baldy sour haircut,

Or a certain amount of stories being told, like you said,

Which is where the kid would come back from being away,

And they’d have a short haircut or a haircut that wasn’t fashionable,

And people would taunt them with baldy sour, baldy sour.

Well, interesting. I didn’t know it went as far as the Army.

But I guess it is a common term then.

Yeah, well, common enough that it shows up in print over a long period, about 70 or 80 years.

But the origins are still indistinct, as you’ll often find with a lot of slang.

I have one theory about this.

In the 1870s, there was a bit of doggerel, like this kind of rhyme, I think, set to music, that was being passed around.

And it was called the Band of Baldy Sour.

This is 1878.

And it’s about a marching band with instruments and the whole thing trying to cross a body of water, a lake, I believe, on a canoe and falling in.

And it’s very much this farcical bit that I can imagine being recited, say, at Boy Scout camps or at school or just as a goof like at the lodge hall or that sort of thing.

I suspect that this may be the start of the popularization, for as little of popularization as there was, of the term Baldy Sour.

But there’s no connection to haircuts in there, so I’m not 100% sure.

At the same time, just about the same period, there was a mine, a gold mine, that was established in Nevada in 1872 or so called the Baldi Sour Mining Company.

And it was in Treasure Hill, White Pine County, Nevada.

And they used the name with no explanation whatsoever.

But my theory is that Baldi Sauer was making the rounds during the 1870s, either as a joke or a comic character or something that people were seeing on stage or from one of the groups doing the tours of the country, doing the small town halls, that sort of thing.

But I haven’t nailed it down.

It’s definitely in my file for more work needs to be done.

Well, I didn’t realize it was that widespread.

That’s interesting, right?

Yes, it certainly is.

Alice, what a great question.

Well, thank you. Thank you for doing the research.

Yeah, sure.

Happy to solve an 80-year-old mystery.

Well, we’ll let you know and everyone know if we find out more about baldy sour, meaning a short haircut, okay?

Okay.

Take care now.

All right. Bye.

Bye-bye.

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