Golden Era songs with off-color subjects.

[V.C. Brunswick]

Cliff Edwards -- I'm Going To Give It To Mary With Love (1936)

[video=youtube;8Bp4ASEm-ys]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bp4ASEm-ys[/video]

 

[Trombone]

From a latter era, Charlie Parker's Moose The Mooche was written about Bird's Heroin dealer in Los Angeles!

 

[Puzzicato]

The Dorsey Brothers' 1934 hit "Annie's Cousin Fanny" is nothing but three minutes of smirky innuendo about backsides. With a toilet joke thrown in for good measure. And yes, that's starchy old uptight Glenn Miller himself at the end, declaring "you'll never see a Fanny half as pretty as mine." I just bet.

It's a good thing they were American, or it wouldn't have been backsides they were talking about!

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

Her Bathing Suit Never Got Wet

 

[LizzieMaine]

Count Basie's smeary 1942 recording of "I'm Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town" just came over the radio, complete with Jimmy "Mr. Five-By-Five" Rushing's sublime vocal -- in which he declares rather forcefully to his hypothetical wife that one reason for his move is that "We ever have any children, I want them all to look like me." As if there were any chance of missing the point, he goes on to to promise that he's going to get a Frigidaire in order to keep the iceman away.

You can have all your rock-era reimaginings of this song. This one's the real deal. And you thought there was never anything nasty on Red Columbia.

 

[Denton]

Frank Stokes, "It's a Good Thing"

What I love about Stokes's delivery is how he runs different verses together:

Most all women got more than one, and it's a good thing
It's a good thing
It's a good thing to have more than one, one woman won't do

 

[GHT]

Louis Prima: Just a Gigolo.
Bull Moose Jackson: My Big Ten Inch
When Jailhouse Rock hit number one, I can remember, as a small boy, the lyric: "If you can't find a partner, use a wooden chair." It baffled me for years. Jerry Leiber you're incorrigible.
When I first heard Paulo Nutini sing: Pencil Full of Lead, I was convinced it had to be from the era. Turns out it was from Paulo's pen. Long live smut.
Louis Jordan: Saturday Night Fish Fry.
Wynonie Harris: Don't Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes At Me.

 

[scotrace]

I'd like to direct all those on social media who are acting as shocked as an Our Gang school principal about current popular lyrics to this thread.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Fats Waller, 1939:

You say you want it well, come and get it!
You always bound to want some lovin'
Raisin' cane by turtle dovin'
Come on now so that there's no shovin', come and get it!

You got two eyes they're so appealing
You got two lips that set me reelin'
Other things that starts that feelin', hmm come and get it!

Now if you gonna love me, and be my tutti fruiti
Don't just turtle-dove me, I gotta get myself some booty!
Now if you want to get me fallin', Come on baby quit that stallin'
It's the last time that I'm callin', come and get it!

Now if you gonna love me, come on be my tutti fruiti, yes
I don't want that just turtle dove stuff, I've gotta get myself some booty!

 

[Bushman]

Though originating in Ireland as a folk melody called "The Old Rose Tree" the song we affectionately know today as "The Ice Cream Song" has quite the checkered history in the States. After making its way here, the song that became known as "Turkey in the Straw" was quickly adapted for racist purposes when the lyrics were rewritten for "Zip Coon" in the early 1800s. However, arguably the most blatantly racist lyrics to the tune came out in 1916 with "N[-word] Love A Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!"

I remember a coworker nearly fainted when I told her of this one day. She wouldn't stop whistling the tune, and I couldn't help but to think of the nastier variants when she did.

A derivative of this tune, though the lyrics have also been applied to others, is the campfire song "Do Your Ears Hang Low." Alternative body parts for both men and women have been inserted in place of ears going as far back as the early 20th Century. There's even been suggested evidence that the dirtier lyrics were written first!

 

[LizzieMaine]

A favorite song of my grandfather's, sung to the tune of "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet:"

"Take off those old gray panties
That used to be your auntie's
And we'll go
For a tumble in the hay!"

I never got to hear the rest of it, because my grandmother always yelled "shut up, you dirty old goat!" at that point.

 

[ChiTownScion]

A favorite song of my grandfather's, sung to the tune of "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet:"

"Take off those old gray panties
That used to be your auntie's
And we'll go
For a tumble in the hay!"

I never got to hear the rest of it, because my grandmother always yelled "shut up, you dirty old goat!" at that point.

Search engines in the hands of the idle curious are the devil's playthings.

What I came up with were lyrics that indicate that similar words were part of the second verse of this:


Put on your old grey bustle, and get out and hustle
'Cause the rent is coming due;
In a field of clover, he will roll you over
If you can't get five, take two.

Put on those old lace panties, that used to be your auntie's
And we'll go for a tussle in the hay;
There is no use a-duckin' 'cause you're gonna get a ****in'
In the good old-fashioned way.

Put on that old blue ointment, to the crab's disappointment
And we'll kill them bastards where they lay;
Though it burns and it itches, it will kill them sons of b!tches
And then you can go out and play.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, I imagine that's pretty much the gist of it. Dear old Papa had a taste for humor that would cause all the OMG MORAL PURITY OF THE ERA types to go into arrythmia.

When he died I found in his desk a carbon-copy page containing a very long, very very very dirty joke that was pretty much "Aristocrats" level of filth. I didn't bother to show it to my grandmother because I figured that, having lived with him for forty-six years, she probably already knew it by heart. He worked on the docks and he ran a gas station, what do you expect?