[Italian renaissance painter Neroccio] had the fastidiousness, the preciosity, the love of archaisms, of your true decadent.

As a result a hybrid music, ‘hokum’, became popular. It owed much to ‘Georgia Tom’ Dorsey, Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy, and the first recordings in the idiom appeared around 1929. Many recordings by The Famous Hokum Boys, the Hokum Trio, The Hokum Boys and similar groups were recorded by 1930. Jokey, often bawdy, frequently satirical, they employed rural techniques in an urban setting, gently lampooning country ways through a city sophistication.

The ads were already showing as he clambered along and in their patchy glare he loomed and ducked and apologized, and was a clumsy intruder in a world of snuggling coupledom.

But an overfurious blow of the hammer so injured the statue that he abandoned it as irrevocably spoiled.