wush (was Re: "Sock It to Me")

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 02:11:41 -0400, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:

>On Jun 17, 2005, at 12:15 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>So are there any noticeable St. Louis-isms in Chuck Berry's songs? I've
>>always wondered if, say, "gunny sack" ("Johnny B. Goode"), "juke joint"
>>("School Days"), "wiggles like a glow worm" ("Roll Over Beethoven"), or
>>"blowin' like a hurrican" ("Rock and Roll Music") were hallmarks of
>>AAVE in the St. Louis region.
>
>Well, the pronunciation "herrican" is one, but the phrase "blowing like
>a hurricane" isn't. We'd say, "The hawk talks." "Gunny sack" is used
>instead of "crocus sack." Mostly, it's Chuck's pronunciation that's
>peculiar to St. Louis.

A belated follow-up... I was recently listening to Chuck Berry's 1958
classic "Carol" and noticed one interesting dialectal form. In a line that
the lyrics pages all transcribe as "You can't dance, I know you wish you
could," Chuck distinctly sings: "...you wush /wUS/ you could." At first I
thought this might be a bit of anticipatory assimilation due to the /U/ in
"could", before realizing that it must be an AAVE variant. And I assume
this isn't specific to St. Louis, since "wush" turns up in various
eye-dialect writings:

Charles W. Chesnutt:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1931082065?v=search-inside&keywords=wush
James Weldon Johnson:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0156135396?v=search-inside&keywords=wush
Paul Laurence Dunbar:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0767919815?v=search-inside&keywords=wush
Priscilla Jane Thompson:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195052544?v=search-inside&keywords=wush

In any case, this seems to have been a point of confusion for bands trying
to master Chuck's lyrics. When the Rolling Stones covered "Carol" in 1964,
Mick changed the line to "You can't dance, I know you *would* you could."


--Ben Zimmer