Hokum was a colorful style of music popular in the
1920s and
1930s. Typically associated with African-American performers, hokum songs were fast-pasted, showy, and syncopated, and often had sexually suggestive lyrics. Hokum songs were usually played with guitar, piano, and base and used primarily
major and
dominant seventh chords with a lot of
stepwise transitions and
circle of fifths tomfoolery. Lively and upbeat, hokum was sometimes known as "
hot jazz."
In jazz history hokum occupied the transition period between ragtime and swing. When hokum-style music was played on a piano, it was often called honky-tonk. One of the principal exponents of the hokum sound was blues great Tampa Red, who formed a band called the "Hokum Boys" with pianist Georgia Tom in the late 1920s. A classic example of a hokum is Robert Johnson's "They're Red Hot."