[Ads-l] Heard: "Everybody can't do it."

[Wilson Gray]

I.e. have his own TV show.

Spoken by a thirty-ish, black Alabamian.

Somehow, this seems a bit strange. Google has the same feeling. When I
searched it, Google first "corrected" it to

"Not everybody can do it."

Can These Bones Live?: The Art of the American Folk Preacher
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0252014162
Bruce A. Rosenberg - 1970, rev.1988 - ‎Preview
375 And I heard Umm-hmm Daniel said that When they had to send— Daniel to
interpretate the king's dreams He told him 380 I can't do it I heard you
talkin' 'bout healin' Some— God got somebody to heal _Everybody can't do
it_ I say _everybody can't do it_ 385 I heard it said the other day there's
some to heal Umm-hmm Some to pastor Some for evangelist But everybody
nowadays 390 Will do what they want to do It just won't work In the end
[song] I want to take, take my rest Lord, in the end.
[from a transcription of a sermon by a black preacher]

OTOH, there was/is? a similar phrase which was/is? a common catch-phrase in
St. Louis:

"Everybody ain't able"

used to comment on one's own or someone else's achievement, good fortune,
et sim.:

a. "I got into the Army Language School!"

b. "Everybody ain't able."

c. "Richard Gregory got on at [was hired by] the Chicago Playboy Club!"

d. "Everybody ain't able."

e. "I got a new [i.e. one that I didn't have before] shart, no money down!
Everybody ain't able."

-- 
-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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org