The Shimmy Queen

From February 27 through March 2, 1921, Bee Palmer and Company played at Davenport, Iowa’s Columbia Theater. According to Esten Spurrier, he and a young Bix Beiderbecke, both budding cornetists, attended every single one of these shows and listened to the great music. The New Orleans men were among the top young jazz musicians, and Pecora and Roppolo were to become legendary.On March 3, 1921, before Bee and her band left Davenport for Peoria, she secretly married her pianist Al Siegel in a midnight ceremony at a judge’s office in the local Masonic Temple. On the marriage license application, Al gave his age as 24 and Bee gave hers as 23. She was actually 27. The Davenport Democrat and Leader reported that Bee “evidenced all the confusion and embarrassment of the unsophisticated school-girl bride and seemed extremely happy when the ceremony had ended.” The bride sported a large purple hat instead of the typical veil.
Bee introduced and is sometimes credited as a writer of one of the most popular "leavin'" songs ever written: Please Don't Talk about Me When I'm Gone In any case the Shimmy was immensely popular in the 1920's and served as the inspiration for the popular song If I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate (A. J. Piron, 1922). Bee was sometimes referred to as "the Shimee-She-Wabble Girl".
On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders
by Franklin P. Adams. With bows to Keats andKeith's
["The World's Most Famous Shoulders"]
Then I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent upon a peak in Darien."
MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of jazz,
And many goodly arms and shoulders seen
Quiver and Quake--if you know what I mean;
I've seen a lot, as everybody has.
Some plaudits got, while others got the razz.
But when I saw Bee Palmer, shimmy queen,
I shook--in sympathy--my troubled bean,
And said, "This is the utter razmatazz."
Then felt I like some patient with a pain
When a new surgeon swims into his ken,
Or like stout Brodie, when, with reeling brain,
He jumped into the river. There and then
I swayed and took the morning train
To Norwalk, Naugatuck, and Darien.