Now, I don't know Bobert. Never met the man, although I'd consider it a privilege to do so. I've also never met a former slave, of any skin color. I have no idea how a former slave of African origin or descent actually spoke English, and I submit that there are very few (if any) people living today who do. I expect that their dialect was the same, or similar, to that spoken by their tan owners, who were mostly of Northern European origin or descent. I have known many tan people from Arkansas, West Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and other places in the southeastern United States who speak one of the several dialects of American Southern, and I have always assumed that Bobert's Mudcat-speak was his attempt to reproduce his own version of spoken English. Somebody who knows him...does he actually sound like that?