Rollin' them bones till the foreman comes back...

I'm 57, pretty good at English, even wrote a "book," (which you can find and read below!)  But it sometimes amazes me what I don't know-- the things I let slip by for an entire lifetime.  For example, the phrase "rollin' them bones till the foreman got back."  All my life I have assumed it meant "resting."  I imagined the skeleton inside a sleeping person, loose, rolling this way and that.

I never looked it up.  I did puzzle over it.  Weren't they sitting in the song.  ("In the song, in the song, in the song!")

So today I watch the old video below and see Chuck act out his favorite song for the French audience, and when he sings "rollin' them bones" he rolls some imaginary dice, and I see and I understand for the first time.

You knew all along, didn't you?

You could have told me!

Anyway, here's Big Bill Broonzy doing a song Chuck probably heard as a teenager.