[stormingheaven] ebonics?

CounterPunch sitka at teleport.com
Thu Aug 19 15:54:25 PDT 1999



>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>Here's a test.
>>
>>Jack be nimble.
>>Jack be quick.
>>Jack jump over the candlestick.
>>
>>Is that Ye olde white English or Ebonics ?
>
>Imperative too.
>
>Doug

Don't forget that Ur-Ebonic hit...Johnny B. Goode!

[the original lyric of which read, "like a colored boy should". But Chuck Berry, who had an almost unerring commercial sense (as well as a taste for peepholes in the guest bathrooms of his houses), changed it to "country" to secure airtime and to rake in more sells from the white folk. (I've always wanted a videotape of Johnny Winter singing the original version of this song.) The rest is, as they say, history.]--jsc

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