“You’re In For A Big Surprise”

“You’re In For A Big Surprise” is a Percy Mayfield song written for Ray Charles; it’s the third song on Side 2 of Ray’s classic 1966 album Crying Time.

The song is a slow-moving, brooding lament with a hidden burning anger at its core, as befits Mayfield’s socially conscious promise that justice is coming. Those currently enjoying an unfair surfeit of power, alerts the song, are going to be knocked down a peg or three.

Race isn’t mentioned explicitly in the lyrics of “You’re In For A Big Surprise” but it doesn’t need to be: given the times and the palpable unrest in America, the underlying message behind the confident warning of this tune is obvious.

Over dramatic strings that sound as if they belong in a particularly tense scene in a movie, Ray sings the words of quiet outrage, addressing his presumptuous tormenter directly through clenched teeth:

I call you mister
I shine your shoes
You go away laughing while I sing the blues
You think I’m funny but you think you’re so wise, young man
Mm-hmm, but you are in for a big surprise

Despite Ray’s own substantial wealth, he knew well the sting of racism in his own life – you don’t get to travel the chitlin’ circuit in the south as a black performer in the 1950s and fail to understand the struggle that will be necessary and ongoing. So when Ray sings “You’ve got a mansion / And a limousine / But please don’t think I’m dirty / And you’re so clean”, it’s unimportant that Ray has all those things (and also his own airplane!) himself. He and Percy are addressing American society as a whole. Then, as now, there was work to be done.

The complex emotions communicated during “You’re In For A Big Surprise” paint a picture of the U.S. circa 1967 – Ray expresses pity, and anger (though he avers, “no I’m not mad,” there is an undeniable undercurrent of bitterness), and a desire for revenge, but ultimately merely wants to see the elimination of injustice.

Much of the sparse, sorrowful feel of “You’re In For A Big Surprise” comes from the simple rhythm combo behind Ray – ride cymbals and basic bass. The brass section gets a somewhat flashy instrumental section towards the end, like swinging jazz in slo-mo, but the subsequent retreat back into the quieter high, sustained notes of the strings reflect the maddening, constant “two steps forward, one or two steps back” feeling of racial progress at the time.

“You’re In For A Big Surprise” fits in well with its neighbors on Crying Time; the preceding song, “We Don’t See Eye To Eye”, was also written by Percy Mayfield, whereas the song that follows it, “You’re Just About To Lose Your Clown”, uses much of the same language as this song – including the line “you’re in for a big surprise” and the promise that you’ll be sorry – but is written for a woman.

Listen to “You’re In For A Big Surprise”

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