"Mean Old World" is a blues song recorded by American blues electric guitar pioneer T-Bone Walker in 1942. It has been described (along with the single's B-side) as "the first important blues recordings on the electric guitar". Over the years it has been interpreted and recorded by numerous blues, jazz and rock and roll artists.
T-Bone Walker began performing "Mean Old World" when he was with Les Hite and His Orchestra from 1939 to 1940. After leaving Hite's band, Walker continued to develop and refine his style on the Los Angeles club circuit. On July 20, 1942, he recorded "Mean Old World" for Capitol Records. The song was performed in the West Coast blues style, with a small combo of pianist Freddie Slack, bassist Jud DeNaut, and drummer Dave Coleman accompanying Walker on vocal and guitar. "Mean Old World" "showcased T-Bones's new, and already developed, style, in which he answered his smoky, soulful vocal phrases with deft, stinging, jazz-inflected lead lines on his electric guitar". Capitol released the song in November 1945, with "I Got a Break, Baby", as the third disc in a five 10-inch record collection "The History of Jazz, Volume 3: Then Came Swing" (Capitol Criterion CE 18). Capitol later issued it as a single in 1947 (Capitol 15003).
The Old World consists of Africa, Europe, and Asia, regarded collectively as the part of the world known to Europeans before contact with the Americas. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the New World (Americas).
In the context of archaeology and world history, the term "Old World" includes those parts of the world which were in (indirect) cultural contact from the Bronze Age onwards, resulting in the parallel development of the early civilizations, mostly in the temperate zone between roughly the 45th and 25th parallels, in the area of the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Persian plateau, India and China.
These regions were connected via the Silk Road trade route, and they have a pronounced Iron Age period following the Bronze Age. In cultural terms, the Iron Age was accompanied by the so-called Axial Age, referring to cultural, philosophical and religious developments eventually leading to the emergence of the historical Western (Hellenism, "classical"), Eastern (Zoroastrian and Abrahamic) and Far Eastern (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism) cultural spheres.
Old World wine refers primarily to wine made in Europe but can also include other regions of the Mediterranean basin with long histories of winemaking such as North Africa and the Near East. The phrase is often used in contrast to "New World wine" which refers primarily to wines from New World wine regions such as the United States, Australia, South America and South Africa. The term "Old World wine" does not refer to a homogeneous style with "Old World wine regions" like Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain each making vastly different styles of wine even within their own borders. Rather, the term is used to describe general differences in viticulture and winemaking philosophies between the Old World regions where tradition and the role of terroir lead versus the New World where science and the role of the winemaker are more often emphasized. In recent times, the globalization of wine and advent of flying winemakers have lessened the distinction between the two terms with winemakers in one region being able to produce wines that can display the traits of the other region—i.e. an "Old World style" wine being produced in a New World wine region like California or Chile and vice versa.
The Old World is a historic reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
Old World may also refer to:
I remember as if it were a meal ago
Said, Tommy the Cat as he reeled back to clear
Whatever foreign matter may have nestled its way into his mighty throat
Many a fat alley rat had met its demise
While staring point blank down the cavernous barrel
Of this awesome prowling machine
Truly a wonder of nature this urban predator
Tommy the cat had many a story to tell
But it was a rare occasion such as this that he did
She came slidin' down the alleyway
Like butter drippin' off a hot biscuit
The aroma, the mean scent, was enough
To arouse suspicion in even the oldest of
Tigers that hung around the hot spot in those days
The sight was beyond belief
Many a head snapped for double even triple
Takes as this vivacious feline made her
Her way into the delta of the alleyway
Where the most virile of the young
Tabbys were known to hang out
They hung in droves
Such a multitude of masculinity
could only be found in one place
And that was O'malley's Alley
The air was thick with cat calls
(No pun intended)
But not even a muscle in her neck did twitch
As she sauntered up into the heart of the alley
She knew what she wanted
She was lookin' for that stud bull, the he cat.
And that was me
Tommy the Cat is my name and I say unto thee