"Sock It to Me"

[Wilson Gray]

Of course. It will be my honor.

 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.

Part of the show was filmed at the Motown recording studios, In one
scene, the recording of "My Girl" by The Temptations was shown. If
you're familiar with the song, then you are also familiar with the
opening guitar riff, often referred to as "the seven best-known notes
in pop music." Now, the Motown house band was integrated. So, it could
be clearly seen that the man playing first guitar and, therefore, the
person playing that magic riff was a white man.

A couple of days later, the Los Angeles Times printed a letter to the
editor from a white woman who had seen this program. The woman stated
that there was such a dearth of talent amongst the colored that they
even had to hire white people to play their own music for them. The
letter-writer had nothing to say about either of the "unknown"
singers. No other mention of the program or of Aretha appeared among
the letters to the editor or anywhere else in the paper

Clearly, neither the white power structure nor the average person on
the white street had any idea who Aretha Franklin was or even gave a
Roosevelt damn. Aretha Franklin had not crossed over the color line by
1967. Q.E.D.

Another time, the popular-music critic of the other L.A. paper wrote
an article in which he claimed that the late Laura Nyro was a better
singer than any black female singers from Ma Rainey to The Supremes.

On a third occasion, a black male singer was quoted as saying that, if
Tom Jones could make a million dollars a year singing like a black
man, then a black man ought to be able to make $50,000 a year singing
like himself. Unfortunately, the man was living in a dream.

During that same time, the federal Government and the state of
California destroyed the part of Los Angeles that had been known as
the "Black Beverly Hills" by running the Harbor Freeway-Santa Monica
Freeway interchange through it.

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?

-Wilson

P.S. Ben, please don't tell me that you also believe that there's such
a thing as "reverse discrimination," too?

On 6/4/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Sock It to Me"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 23:05:24 -0400, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
>
> >This was indeed the chorus. However, I know of no reason to believe
> >that Aretha's "Respect" is either the origin or even the popularizer of
> >the contemporary meaning of the phrase. It was used as a catch phrase
> >on the TV show, "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In." This is a far more likely
> >source for the general public than the song. "Respect," given that
> >Aretha had not yet crossed the color line at that time.
>
> Could you clarify what you mean by that?  "Respect" hit #1 on the pop
> charts in June '67, and that year she had a few other Top Ten hits ("Baby
> I Love You," "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)," "(You Make Me
> Feel Like) A Natural Woman").  So how exactly had she "not yet crossed the
> color line"?
>
> >From the BBC
> >Comedy Guide: "The series [1967-1973]  was stuffed full of recurring
> >characters, skits and, in particular, _catch phrases_, all of which
> >were soon ringing around the school-halls and workplaces of America.
> >These included _'Sock it to me'_ (usually said by the
> >American-domiciled British actress Judy Carne, who duly became known as
> >the 'sock it to me girl')..." Before that, it was a common -
> >undocumented, needless to say - slang term amongst the colored.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>


--
-Wilson Gray