Easy Rider
Encyclopedia : E : EA : EAS : Easy Rider
- This article is about the slang expression "easy rider." There is also an article about the movie Easy Rider.
One early documented reference to the term "easy rider" was during World War I, where British and American forces in Europe had to march many miles to and from staging areas and in most cases even to the front line, whereas the majority of French troops rode in the train cars that were reserved for equipment only, and during the Battle of the Marne commandeered all the taxis in Paris in lieu of marching and thus not endearing the allies to their cause, who saw them as trying to take an "easy ride" everywhere even in terms of defending their own homeland, and it can be said that this has set the tone for French and American relations ever since.
During the Great Depression a large population of Americans driven by poverty rode the railroad system & the term easy rider, (along with hobo and bum) found its way into slang vocabulary to mean a slow moving train and the men that, even after the great depression, continued to live and travel along the rails. Majority of these trains, commissioned in the early 1920s had the letters C.C. (for Colorado Central) or S.C. (for Southern Coastal) stenciled on them in bold white letters & this is most likely where the term C.C. rider originated.
In the early 20th century African American communities the term referred a woman who had liberal sexual views, had been married more than once, or someone skilled at sex. The term appears in numerous blues lyrics of the 1920s and many popular early folk-blues tunes had "See see rider" or "C.C. rider" in its title. Early uses of the term include the 1924 jazz recording by Johnny Bayersdorffer's Jazzola Novelty Orchestra entitled "I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Riding Now".
In the World War II era the slang term re-emerged with a modified meaning, where G.I.s on extended deployment in Asia or Europe (unofficially) employed children to perform the daily mundane tasks so common in the military like tending to barracks, shining boots, and the like, so a G.I. who employed a houseboy coasted through this work and had an "easy ride".
Eventually young native women were hired to tend to individual living quarters and soon became lovers as well as maids.
When these men left and other G.I.'s took their place, the women, accustomed to the workload, would remain to perform the same services, sometimes preparing gear or a living area for inspection better than the soldier could.
The term "easy rider" then was actually an endearing term and many G.I.s fathered children with these women, but left them behind when the war ended. The arrangement was resumed in the Korean War some years later but the practice was heavily discouraged, but it is common to see a houseboy in the popular Korean War sitcom M.A.S.H. cleaning or helping out around the fort or camp. During the Vietnam War American troops again employed houseboys & women in the camps, many of whom were informants for the Viet Cong, during attacks on these bases many of the G. I.s were shocked to see the Viet Cong bypass tents and attack the command post directly because of the knowledge gained from these spies. After the war many liberal immigration laws were created to allow the children fathered in Asia, called amerasians, to gain visas to America.
The term had a different meaning in the "free-love" cultural era of the 1960s and was first applied to women who practiced free love. A man who lived with this type of woman had a free or easy ride, since the woman still did most of the chores even though the Woman's Liberation Movement had its greatest influence on women at this time.
The term soon acquired a negative connotation however as it became a derogatory way to describe a woman whom a hippie (a term which incidentally was a variation of bum or hobo) could shack up with and then leave abruptly and who would not get angry if he came back later. Soon it was applied to prostitutes whom it was easy to fool or steal from or who simply traded their charms for a small amount of food or drugs.
The term appears in the famous "See See Rider Blues" song recorded by Ma Rainey in 1925. The song and others like it used the loneliness of a rider of the rails or wanderer as a theme in their music.
The 1969 movie Easy Rider had wandering motorcycle riders as its characters, and due to the notoriety of the movie the term again acquired another meaning to fit into the cultural mores of the time to mean a good, usually Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Dennis Hopper, the director of Easy Rider, said in the making-of documentary Shaking the Cage: "An easy rider is a person that is not a pimp, but he lives off a woman; he lives off a whore. He's her easy rider. He's the one that she loves and she gives money to. He doesn't pimp her, but he's her easy rider."
Led Zeppelin, although a rock band, was heavily influenced by early jazz and blues and make reference in numerous songs to an 'easy rider', most notably the song "Out on the Tiles" makes reference to this free love practice and the cultural impact of it as he is both proud and ashamed to be seen with a woman known to be an "easy rider" while at the same time trying to hitchhike a ride:
"I'm so glad I'm living and gonna tell the world I am, I got me a fine woman and she says that I'm her man, One thing that I know for sure gonna give her all the loving Like nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody can. Standing in the noonday sun trying to flag a ride, People go and come, see my rider right by my side, It's a total disgrace, they set the pace, it must be a race And the best thing I can do is run."
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.