"No Respect" from Godfather?

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 7, 2004, at 8:12 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "No Respect" from Godfather?
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>
> At 4:03 PM -0400 10/7/04, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>>
>>> I was wondering if an alternate source of inspiration for Rodney
>>> Dangerfield's line, since The Godfather (at least the movie version)
>>> was clearly too late, was the popularity of the Aretha Franklin song
>>> R-E-S-P-E-C-T, very often heard in the late 1960s.  (Her own
>>> recording was, I believe, 1967, although Otis Redding had covered it
>>> earlier.)
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>
>> Larry, I think you mean that "Otis Redding had [written it and]
>> _recorded_ it earlier."
>
> No, I didn't mean that, but I should have.   In fact I was thinking
> it seemed odd that Aretha would have written the song and Otis would
> have recorded it two years before she did.  Clearly your chronology
> has the advantage of being not only more plausible but more accurate.

Otis is said to have called down the blessings of heaven on Aretha,
given that his original version had basically sunk without a trace.
Thanks to her, he still picked up big bucks in authorship royalties.

>
>>  In any case, I wouldn't bet my ass on it, but I
>> would bet (an extremely modest amount of) money on it that Rodney
>> predated not only Aretha, but also Otis, with respect to the "respect"
>> line.
>
> Maybe so, but at least their recordings predated his use of the line
> on the 1970 Ed Sullivan show, unlike the release of the Godfather
> movie.
>
> Larry
>

Good point. In fact, since I wrote the above, I've come to believe in
the possibility that Otis/Aretha may well have put a bug in Rodney's
ear, so to speak. You never know.

-Wilson