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

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 27, 2005, at 1:43 AM, Benjamin Zimmer 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:      wush (was Re: "Sock It to Me")
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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
>

I am in complete agreement with you on this point. Another instance
occurs in the Stones' version of Bobby Womack's _It's All Over Now_.
The Stones sing "She hurt my nose open, that's no lie." The correct
line is "She had my nose open, that's no lie." I don't know what the
Stones thought that the line meant, but to say that a woman has a man's
nose open is to say that he's stone in love with her, that she can lead
him around like using the proverbial ten-foot pole to lead a bull
around by the ring in his nose.

I learned the phrase in St. Louis around the time that I reached
adolescence in the late '40's, whereas Bobby Womack's song was composed
and recorded in L.A. in the mid-'Sixties. So, I've always assumed that
the "nose" phrase is, like the pronunciation "wush," pan-BE, though, of
course, the former is phonetics and the latter is slang.

Oddly enough, I had no idea that the Stones had done a cover of _Carol_.

-Wilson Gray