"every since"

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 1:18 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> --specify the standard "ever since", the actual words sung are (as Wilson would predict) "every since".  I'd have been surprised if I hadn't been pre-apprised.

You run across that sort of thing, here and there. Muddy *Water* - as
he himself pronounced his nom-de-blues; of course, youneverknow, given
BE final-s deletion - sings "Manish [mEjnIS] boy" and the title on the
label of the original Atlantic 78 was so printed: _Manish Boy_.
Nowadays, AFAI can tell, the title is universally "corrected" to
"*Mannish* Boy."

What's up with that? PC run rampant? As though it ever runs in any other manner!

And speaking of "correction"…

With the passage of time, more and more of the music of my lost youth
appears on line in the form of mp3's. The site, LegalSounds.com, sells
an immense range of such recordings for a mere $.07 each. This low
price prompts me to buy several versions of the same song in order to
ensure that I acquire the one that is the version that I recall and
that is most nearly acoustically perfect.

A day or so ago, I came across several different mp3's of the Howlin'
Wolf classic, "Oh, Red." I clearly recall the opening verse as of this
jump blues as

"Oh, Red! What are you going to do?"

or, in eye-phonetics,

"Oh, Rayid! Whutcha gown do?"

So, I click on the first mp3 and I hear clearly, to my *indescribable*
consternation, as my long-time fans will not be surprised to learn,

"Oh, Rayid! Whatcha _*GWINE*_ do?"

WTF?!!! "Gwine"?!!! How can this be?! I used to own the 78! I heard
the song on the radio and played it on the family Motorola floor-model
radio-phonograph thousands of times without *ever* hearing this
_gwine_!

I clicked on one the other versions and heard the expected "gown."

Clearly, Mr. Wolf, for some reason, had recorded two versions of the
song: one without a washboard, but with _gwine_, and one substituting
_gown_ for _gwine_, but with a washboard added, so as not to decrease
the level of authenticity.

Somebody must have have pulled his coat and put a bug in his ear:

Bruh, you know, if you sing "gwine," you're just going to confirm the
stereotype. So, you'll need to correct that. We'll go ahead and
release the proper version, but, instead of destroying the country
version, we'll save it. Sit-ty-fie yeahs f'om now, iss gon' mess wit
Wilson *mine*! You kin *bleee* dat!

-Wilson
-----
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

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