"Sock It to Me"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 01:03:56 -0400, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> In 1968. there was a television show on one of the Big Three devoted
>to the careers of two uknown female song stylists, one white and one
>black. Unfortunately, the unknown white singer's career came from
>nowhere and went nowhere. I'd never heard of her at the time and have
>not heard of her since. Hence, her name escapes me.
>
>The unknown black singer was Aretha, if you can believe that. Given
>that her career went back to at least 1964 and probably farther, I was
>stunned to discover that, clearly, no one at ABC/CBS/NBC had ever
>heard of her.
>
[snip]
>
>Jesus! - you should pardon the expression - how long have you been
>living in this country, Ben? Are you really so unaware of the way that
>things were and are? Don't you recall that, in the _'Sixties,_ the
>lynching of blacks and even of some Jews was still a commonplace
>practice?

Thank you for your enlightening recollections.  I wasn't actually alive in
the Sixties, so I no doubt take certain things for granted about that era
that only developed with subsequent hindsight-- for instance, the
recognition of Aretha Franklin (by both blacks and whites) as probably the
finest singer of American popular music in the last 40 years.  Whenever
Boomer outfits like Rolling Stone or VH1 do their "Greatest Songs Ever"
lists, "Respect" routinely places in the top five.  So in retrospect, it
is indeed hard to imagine that Aretha wasn't adequately recognized at her
peak.

I can't quite believe that Aretha could have been considered an "unknown"
performer in 1968, even by relatively clueless network execs.  As I
mentioned, "Respect" had hit #1 on the Billboard charts for a few weeks in
the summer of '67 and she had numerous other pop hits.  Her albums sold
quite well too-- _Aretha Arrives_ (1967), _I Never Loved A Man The Way I
Love You_ (1967), _Aretha Now_ (1968), and _Lady Soul_ (1968) peaked at
#5, #2, #3, and #2, respectively, on the Billboard pop charts.  By 1968,
she was one of the top-selling individual recording artists, black or
white.  Is it possible that you're misremembering the year?  The
Temptations released "My Girl" in 1965-- Aretha would have been an
"unknown" to white audiences then.

I'm well aware (from reading, at least) about the difficulties black
performers faced in those days-- how even Otis Redding, one of the
all-time greats (and of course the originator of "Respect"), wasn't really
appreciated by white audiences until after his untimely death.  My
question was simply how Aretha's version of "Respect" could have been
considered behind "the color line" when it hit #1 on the *pop* charts.

This is a separate question, however, from what sort of appreciation white
audiences had regarding the song's lyrical content.  Aretha also sings
"Take care, T.C.B." and "Give me my propers" in that song, but those lines
were no doubt opaque to most white listeners.  So the "Sock it to me" line
might have been similarly ignored until the "Laugh-In" crowd brought it to
greater prominence.


--Ben Zimmer