A man on a fuzzy tree

There is an idiomatic slang phrase I use occasionally, most recently during a conversation with my yoga teacher, relating to him an encounter with a certain Her we both know fairly well, when she had passed me in her car as I was walking down the street, and having noticed her facial expression of anger, sadness and pain, as a reaction, I thought, to the sight of me, I told the yoga teacher that the experience got me all shook up!

Uh, uh, uh, I'm all shook up! Yes, it's incorrect grammatically, but who'd ever say 'I'm all shaken up?'! During formal occasions, when I slip up and say the incorrect phrase, I have a bit of trouble backing out of it, and I'll correct myself saying something like, "uhm, I got a little shaken up.' The society ladies present raise their eyebrows, but in the end, they find it in their hearts to forgive. Except for one of them, but that's another story altogether.

The ungrammatical phrase originated most likely on the streets of New York, or among Southern blacks, but it gained wide usage after Elvis Presley recorded a song by Otis Blackwell titled, well, 'All Shook Up' and took it to the top of the charts in 1957, as a follow up to his hit composed by the same Otis Blackwell, and titled 'Don't Be Cruel'. Incidentally, according to reports, Presley mimicked on his recordings Otis Blackwell's own interpretations he heard on the acetate demos. The two never met.

How the great Otis Blackwell, who went to write numerous hits for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and others, and remained and died in obscurity, came up with the song, is another story, which I'd like to relate here.

Actually, there are several version of this story and, in the spirit of John Ford who had a line in the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, that went 'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend', I'll relate the version I heard first and consider my favourite.

Otis Blackwell, already enjoying the big success of Don't Be Cruel, visits his music publisher, Shalimar Music in New York, bragging that he can write a song about anything. One of the owners of the company walks in, shakes a bottle of Pepsi Cola he's holding in his hand, and says "Here, write about this!" (A historical note: while the circumstances of the event, as well the identity of the person who shook that bottle vary in the different versions of the story, one element remains constant throughout: it was a bottle of Pepsi and not Coke!) Otis came back the next day with the song, which in part went like this:

A well I bless my soul
What's wrong with me?
I'm itching like a man on a fuzzy tree
My friends say I'm actin' wild as a bug
I'm in love I'm all shook up
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

[...]

She touched my hand what a chill I got
Her lips are like a vulcano that's hot
I'm proud to say she's my buttercup
I'm in love, uh, I'm all shook up
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!