Shoes and Blues: Sugar Pie DeSanto Prefers Mules

Did you read my story on wedge sneakers in the Huffington Post’s Stylelist section yesterday? If not …

CLICK HERE.

You’ll see that at the end, I refer to a 1964 blues song, “Hi-Heel Sneakers,” as I’ve done before when writing about wedge sneakers.

The song was written and first recorded by Tommy Tucker (born Robert Higginbotham).

It’s been covered hundreds of times, so you may be more familiar with Stevie Wonder’s version …

… or the Rolling Stones’s version.

In the song, Tommy addresses the gal he’s going out with that night, encouraging her to put on her red dress, high-heel sneakers and “wig-hat.” He also tells her to bring along a pair of boxing gloves in case there’s a fight. Best to be prepared for that sort of thing, I guess.

What I didn’t know until my Huffington Post story ran was that a singer named Sugar Pie DeSanto answered Tommy Tucker’s song with one called “Slip-In Mules.” She says her red dress is at the cleaners, and that she’ll be wearing low-heel, slip-in mules. She sings:

She doesn’t say how she feels about wig-hats and boxing gloves. Take a listen.

I’ve got to thank a Huffington Post commenter who calls herself “notconvincedgranny” for bringing Sugar Pie’s song to my attention. I haven’t been so excited about a response song since the ’80s, when UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” started hip-hop’s Roxanne Wars.

“Roxanne, Roxanne” accused a girl of being stuck-up because she wasn’t interested in the rappers. I can’t believe she didn’t fall for their awesome outfits. Tight red pants were the hotness back then.

The first response was “Roxanne’s Revenge.”

That was followed by “The Real Roxanne.”

It didn’t stop there. Wikipedia has a list of additional Roxanne songs. The Police’s “Roxanne” — about a prostitute — has nothing to do with this series. The Police’s song came out in 1978, years before the UTFO release.

As far as I know, Roxanne the prostitute never replied to The Police in musical fashion, but if I’m wrong, let me know in the comments!