"I said to myself, 'Self...'" in "Moose Turd Pie"

[Wilson Gray]

The late, great Clerow Wilson Honey, AKA "Flip Wilson," was using this
as a cathch phrase in the '60's.

Cf.

1964. Pot Luck; Scepter Records SRM/SPS-520

or the perhaps more-easily found

1968. Cowboys and Colored People; Atlantic Records AT 8149

1968. You Devil, You!; Atlantic Records AT 8179

-Wilson


On 1/26/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      "I said to myself, 'Self...'" in "Moose Turd Pie"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Back in September I posted a query here about the locution "(So) I
> said/says to myself, 'Self...'" I also wrote two Language Log posts on
> the topic:
>
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002658.html
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002661.html
>
> I was unable to find examples before 1980, so I asked Language Log
> readers if they could supply earlier attestations. Many readers had
> vague memories of various comedians using the line, but only two
> firmly attested pre-1980 exx have come in, both from 1973.
>
> One example is from Allen Toussaint's song "Play Something Sweet
> (Brickyard Blues)," recorded by the Scottish R&B singer Frankie Miller
> in 1973 and more famously by Three Dog Night in 1974:
>
>     So I said to myself
>     I said "Self, do you see what is sailin' through my soul?"
>     And I gotta have some more, don't ya know.
>
> I just received the second example, from "Moose Turd Pie," a tall tale
> recorded by Utah Philips on his 1973 album _Good Though_:
>
>     "I looked down at that meadow wafer, and I said to myself,
>     'Self, I'm gonna bake up a big moose turd pie.'"
>
>     audio: http://www.utahphillips.org/stuff/mooseturdpie.mp3
>     text: http://www.lpslicer.com/KFAT.htm
>     album: http://www.rounder.com/index.php?id=album.php&catalog_id=5719
>
> The story is said to have folkloristic roots predating the Utah
> Philips recording. Does anyone know how to find earlier tellings of
> "Moose Turd Pie" that might have the "Self" line?
>
> (Proquest has an abstract for a 1982 dissertation by Saul Brody at
> Univ. of Pennsylvania with the title, "The Effect of
> Performer-Audience Interaction on Performance Strategies: 'Moose-Turd
> Pie' in Context." I'll have to track that down.)
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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>

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