The writer, private Joe Nevens of the US Army, is taking R&R with friends in Tokyo. Pacific Stars And Stripes, 20 January 1954. The sax man was frantic and the horn was the most. The drummer was beatin’ the skins, The pianist was really ticklin’ the eighty-eight. Lots of noises, lots of sounds that put us up on cloud seven though we weren’t in the States. We latched onto an ultimate meetin’ where a local crew was makin’ with the music that liked to rock the roof and everyone was havin’ a ball. Later, it seems to have referred to a dreamy state:Īny worth-while career takes years of patience and hard work, but why not stop day-dreaming, come in off cloud eight, and get started this year instead of next?Īnd was used later the same year in a radio show with a distinctively oddball sense of humour, Rogue’s Gallery, in which the private eye Richard Rogue, played by Dick Powell, was knocked senseless each episode and transported to cloud eight, where his alter ego, Eugor, gave him clues that helped him solve the mystery. Variant forms of the expression are recorded even earlier.Ĭloud eight is known from Albin Pollock’s glossary The Underground Speaks of 1935, in which it’s defined as “befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor” and which might owe part of its genesis to the 1930 car, the Reo Flying Cloud Eight. As one instance, the Los Angeles Times reported that a yacht taking part in a race around Catalina Island in June 1947 was called Cloud Nine. But there is indirect evidence that it was by then already known. This is the first use of the phrase we have. Originally produced in Chicago by the CBS affiliate WBBM, this was the show’s network premiere, one of several that summer sponsored by the chewing-gum manufacturer. blends fantasy, music, drama and comedy into 30 minutes of imaginative entertainment. This excitingly new show presented by the Wm. But there was another show, often listed alongside it in the schedules:Ĭloud Nine. I can’t find a contemporary reference to this. The expression is often said to have been popularised by the Johnny Dollar radio show of the early 1950s, in which every time the hero was knocked unconscious he was transported to cloud nine. Rhodes was an outfielder for the New York Giants, a baseball player about whom it was said that on the surface he seemed to be unable to run, hit, throw, or field, but who beat you anyway he’s still remembered by aficionados of the game as helping to ensure his team’s 4 – 0 victory in the 1954 World Series. Q From Ernie Epp: What is the origin of the expression cloud nine for a very happy person?Ī The phrase to be on cloud nine, meaning that one is blissfully happy, started life in the United States and has been widely known there since the 1950s.ĭusty Rhodes of the Giants admitted today he will have to come down off cloud nine pretty soon and go to work again.

Cloud nine meaning idiom