Walk the Walk

[Wilson Gray]

I'm with Michael, though I know very well that the pros don't accept
personal experience as evidence. I remember the late, great Al Benson
quite well. Saint Louis's black DJ's practically worshipped at his
feet. Note, also, that this fits well with Wilson's Claim: that, back
in the day, it took about ten years for black usages to leap the color
bar into print.

-Wilson

P.S. Michael, did you ever hear of Freddie Goree? We knew each as
children in Saint Louis. He's one of the DJ's featured in a book held
by Widener Library on Chicago's black-music-on-radio scene. -W.
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain





On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Michael Sheehan <Wordmall at aol.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Michael Sheehan <Wordmall at AOL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Walk the Walk
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In a message dated 4/30/09 12:01:58 AM, LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU writes:
>
>
>> ubject: "Walk the talk" antedated to 1957
>>
>> Today's headline said the now-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter will have to
>> "walk the talk" when it comes to voting, which reminded me of the possible
>> idiom-blending -- or idiom-compression -- of "talk the talk, and walk the
>> walk" or variants thereof. I see that the earliest attestation noted here
>> is
>> one from 1984, found by Ben Zimmer:
>>
>> Seattle Times, Dec 3, 1984, p. C11 (Factiva)
>> The blackboard in the Juanita Rebels' Kingdome locker room said it all
>> after
>> their 41-27 Class AAA title game win over South Kitsap. "WE WALKED OUR
>> TALK."
>>
>> This was in a 2005 message, from the days before Google Books. Here are a
>> couple of pre-1984 examples I found there:
>>
>> Company Execs and S&H Must Walk the Talk
>> (Occupational Hazards. By Health Reference Center, 1962, p. 11)
>>
>> The challenge for the government will be to walk the talk and be
>> transparent
>> and non-political in its decision-making.
>> (Middle East Economic Digest, 1957, p. 51)
>>
>> These examples were pretty isolated; the 1957 one was the only one from
>> the
>> 50s, even after checking for "walking", "walked" and "walks". Example were
>> much more plentiful in the 1970s and 1980s. I haven't checked to compare
>> with the earliest appearance of "walk the walk" and "talk the talk".
>>
>> Neal Whitman
>> Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
>> Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com
>>
>
> I can take it back to 1952 based on personal experience. Al Benson was a
> very popular DJ on a Chicago R & B radio station (WGES?). One of his sponsors
> was Pekin Cleaners, and Al's standard spiel was, "You gotta walk that walk
> and talk that talk, because if you ain't Pekinized, you ain't recognized."
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Michael J. Sheehan
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