I bumped into the hilarious phrase "Slap my ass and call me Sally!" the other day. Naturally, I wondered where it originated. . .The first place I found was the Hot Sauce World web site, where they sell a hot sauce called "Smack My Ass And Call Me Sally...The Slap Heard around the World. One of the top twenty hottest sauces in the world. Don't forget to scratch the hand print on Chet's ass when you get the hot sauce bottle. 5 oz. $7.89."
A similar phrase was used by Australian and US soldiers during World War II: "Cut off my legs and call me Shorty!" Louis Armstrong recorded a song by this title in 1940 that was frequently played on US Armed Forces radio stations.
Google lists 75 hits for a similar phrase: "tie me up and call me Shirley."
"Slap me silly and call me Sally" also appears to be a 2 Live Crew tune. Here is it is in a fan video from YouTube:
The top ten virals web site has this photo, which makes me think someone actually manufactured clothing/undies with the phrase.
There's a band, with a site on MySpace named Slap My Ass And Call Me Sally.
I never did run into any serious analysis of the phrase or its origins on any language analysis, folklore, or slang sites like slangsite.com, or the Urban Dictionary. . .
It is used on hundreds of web sites as an expression, but I couldn't find any real detail. I gave up searching, but figured our readers might be interested in my meager findings in any case. It's not definitive, but, then, what really is?
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