- Stash Records
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Copulatin' Blues Vol. 2 - The Duck's Yas Yas - Eddie Johnson And His Crackerjacks Time: 2:39
- Frankie And Johnny (Dirty Parody) - Unknown Cowboy Time: 1:25
- I'm Gonna Shave You Dry - [unknown, possibly Walter Roland With Lucille Bogan] Time: 2:35
- Take Out That Thing - [Cliff Edward, aka Ukelele Ike] Time: 2:15
- Pussy, Pussy, Pussy - The Light Crust Doughboys Time: 1:56
- Somebody's Been Ridin My Black Gal - Art Mckay Time: 2:20
- Darktown Strutter's Ball [Dirty Parody, aka The Rotten Cocksucker's Ball] - The Clovers Time: 1:01
- It's Too Big Papa - Claude Hopkins And His Band Time: 1:57
- It Feels So Good - The Hokum Boys Time: 2:27
- Bye Bye Cherry - [Dirty Parody Of Bye Bye Blackbird] Unknown Cowboy Time: 1:03
- Pussy - Harry Roy And His Bat Club Boys Time: 2:39
- She Squeezed My Lemon - Art Mckay Time: 2:15
- A Bird In The Hand (Real Name Unknown) - Unknown Duet Time: 2:35
- It's Tight Like That - Clara Smith acc. by Charlie Green Time: 2:34
- Shave Em Dry [First Version] - Bessie Jackson Time: 2:14
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COPULATIN' BLUES VOLUME 2
SIDE A:
1. THE DUCK'S YAS YAS: Eddie Johnson (p) and his Crackerjacks, Shorty Baker, James Talphy (t); Winfield Baker (tb) Fred Martin-Waltes Martin (as); Chick Franklin (ts); Benny Jackson (bj-gtr); Singleton Palmer (sb); Lester Nichols (d). February 25, 1932
2. FRANKIE AND JOHNNY (dirty parody): unknown cowboy. circa early '30s
3. I'M GONNA SHAVE YOU DRY: possibly Walter Roland (p, v); Lucille Bogan, aka Bessie Jackson, (additional v). March 5, 1935
4. TAKE OUT THAT THING: Cliff Edwards, aka "Ukelele Ike," vocalist accompanied by own ukelele and unknown (p)? circa late '30s
5. PUSSY, PUSSY, PUSSY: The Light Crust Doughboys, unknown personnel possibly including Kenneth Pitts (vn); Knocky Parker (p) Dick Reinhart (g); J. B. Brinkley (g); Ramon De Armon (sb). late '30s
6. SOMEBODY'S BEEN RIDIN' MY BLACK GAL: Art McKay (v); acc. by Odell Rand (cl) Roosevelt Sykes (p). April 30, 1937
7. DARKTOWN STRUTTER'S BALL (dirty parody, THE ROTTEN COCKSUCKER'S BALL): The Clovers, accapella vocal group. circa mid-to-late '50s
SIDE B:
1. IT'S TOO BIG PAPA: Claude Hopkins and his Band, Shirley Clay, Kenneth Rome (t); Joe Evans, Pinky Williams (as); Joe Garland, Ted Barnett (ts); Johnny Ricks (bars); Claude Hopkins (p); John Brow (sb); Wilbur Kirk (d). 1945
2. IT FEELS SO GOOD: The Hokum Boys, Lonnie Johnson and Spencer Williams (v duet); acc Johnson (g); J. C. Johnson (p). February 18, 1929
3. BYE BYE CHERRY (dirty parody of BYE BYE BLACKBIRD): unknown cowboy. circa early '30s
4. PUSSY: Harry Roy and his Bat Club Boys, from the Bat Club, London, Harry Roy (cl, as second vocal); Bill Currie (first vocal) 1931
5. SHE SQUEEZED MY LEMON: Art McKay (v); as with side A, track 6)
6. A BIRD IN THE HAND (real title unknown): unknown black blues duet, possibly Butterbeans and Susie Edwards, circa early '30s.
7. IT'S TIGHT LIKE THAT: Clara Smith acc. by Charlie Green (tb); Porter Grainger (p). January 26, 1929
8. SHAVE 'EM DRY: Bessie Jackson (v); acc by Walter Roland (p) March 5, 1935
Hayakawa, in his ground breaking essay on the nature of the blues, argues that mainstream popular songs tend to glamorize and idealize romance, while the lyrics of the blues deal with the subject on a much more realistic, down to earth level. However, in posing this polemic, Hayakawa overlooked what would have been the single biggest argument in his favor — the dirty blues, which describe the most basic aspect of human relations, intercourse itself, in a frank and open manner.
Even before the current rock era, wherein guitars serve as obvious phallic symbols and fornication is seemingly the sole subject of all lyricists, we find sexual subjects coming into popular music. The point of this album is to illustrate how sex, like drugs (see Stash ST101-106-117-118), was always part of the music scene. Until the '50s, however, one had to delve into the sounds of the various American subcultures to find these elements. But they were there all right, creeping up from the blues and into all other genres of the prerock era: dance music, personality and vocals, hillbilly and country music, and jazz.
An example of the latter, The Duck's Yas-Yas opens this collection, much the same way it opened up the career of Duke Ellington's fine trumpeter, Harold "Shorty" Baker. This track, like most on this album, is admittedly selected for it's musical as much as it's pornographic value. However, it's metaphoric substitution of the term "Yas-Yas-Yas," for an unmentionable part of the anatomy renders it suitable for inclusion. Again, like everything else on this album, it has never been issued on LP in this country (the one foreign LP it did turn up on being long out of print and our copy being a rare mint condition original 78).
From the metaphoric to the literal, Frankie and Johnny and Bye Bye Cherry are performed by an unknown singing cowboy who does a first rate impersonation of then rising western star Gene Autry. He performs these thoroughly filthy ballads with the heart-felt sincerity that was always Autry's trademark, singing "bye bye" to his girlfriend's "cherry" like a French soldier bidding "au revoir" to his "cherie."
Next comes the first of two versions of the pornographic classic, Shave 'Em Dry (aka I'm Gonna Shave You Dry). These provide the exact, 180 degrees opposite of the idealized love celebrated by tin pan alley tunesmiths. Usually, most performers of the erotic blues prefer to use humor and double entendres. For instance, the merchandise described in If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sittin' on It, Before I Give It Away (heard on Stash 117) that turns out to be a chair (ha-ha!) and the "thing" that Ukelele Ike takes out in Take Out That Thing, turns out to be an insurance policy (take out a policy — get it?). On the other hand, Lucille Bogan and Walter Roland, the performers of both versions of both versions of Shave 'Em Dry, and Claude Hopkins, their great jazz pianist, who leads his band through It's Too Big Papa, prefer their entendres single, and explicitly so.
Take Out That Thing also illustrates how the "party" (meaning dirty) record market used superstar talent on it's way up (such as an unnamed cowboy heard elsewere in this collection) and down, meaning Cliff Edwards. The once major vaudeville headliner and movie star was in fact reduced to recording pornography in be- tween comebacks (in one of which he supplied the voice of ''Jimminy Cricket," in Walt Disney's Pinnochio) to pay for his divorces and drugs.
We can't be sure which of the great philosophers was the first to use the familiar felis catus as a code-word for the female sex organ, but Benjamin Franklin, who said "All cats are grey at night," has to be somewhere in the running. In songwriting then, a surefire way to keep your audience amused is to gravitate between referring to the animal and the orifice. George Gershwin penned a tune late in his life called "Here Pussy Pussy Pussy Pussy ..." (supposedly Gertrude Stein's pet name for Alice B. Toklas) in which he clearly means the house cat. But the Light Crust Doughboy's Pussy Pussy Pussy, is open to either interpretation as is packed with great jazz solos besides. On the other hand, Pussy, by the up and coming British bandleader, Harry Roy,utilizes a strictly sexual connotation of the term (Roy being a sort of British alloy of Ted Lewis and Cab Calloway who not only jumped around a lot in front of his band, but played clarinet and alto, sang loudly and tap-danced). Not included in this album is Duke Ellington's classic instrumental feature for Johnny Hodges, ultimately renamed Warm Valley but with an original title that listeners should be able to infer by now.
Somebody's Been Ridin' My Black Gal and She Squeezed My Lemon are by the under-recorded Chicago bluesman Art(hur) McKay, and further demonstrate the use of the substitution of an ambiguous slang term for a four letter word. Art could, in fact, be referring to any number of anatomical members as his "lemon." The phrase "riding," means "love making," thereby giving new significance to the '30s movie gangster cliche "Take him for a ridel"
Clara Smith's It's Tight Like That (the phrase "tight" conveying a delightfully succinct reference to either sex, drugs or money) and the Hokum Boys' It Feels So Good are variations on the same theme, the latter actually being more of a paraphrase of the former, which was a big race-record hit as recorded by Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Noone and others. Clara Smith is often described as having the nicest voice of all the Smith girls as well as the most interesting jazz accompaniments, and It Feels So Good spotlights the great jazz and blues guitar pioneer Lonnie Johnson and the composer of the popular standard I Ain't Got Nobody, Spencer Williams.
A Bird In The Hand (as it was renamed on a later party-label records issue) depicts musically an X-rated male-female encounter set in a doctor's office It's very much a period piece (no pun intended) that uses then-prevalent radio techniques to paint a mental picture of such a scene. All in all, it reminds me of a story told by the mother of a friend of mine, who remembered, growing up in the '30s, the village idiot, who would read "girlie" magazines (referred in those innocent times as "fuck Books") to himself while chanting over and over "oh boy! oh boy! oh boy ..."
We end with a second version of Shave 'Em Dry, perhaps the single most explicit tune ever put on vinyl. The main thrust of the late '50s rock revolt to take this brand of material, performed with considerably less excitement, and move it out of the ghetto subculture and into the dominant children's pop music scene — where it has remained ever since.
-Will Friedwald, 1983
Executive Producer: Bernard
Brightman
Produced and Annotated by: Will Friedwald
Source Material:
Lloyd Rauch
John Leifert
Fred von Bernowitz
Dave Weiner
Joe Lauro
Mastering and Transfers: Tabby Andriello, Charles Leighton
Liner: Madeline Sloan
References: BLUES AND GOSPEL RECORDS by Goodrich and
Dixon, JAZZ RECORDS (1897-1942) and THE COMPLETE
ENTERTAINMENT DISCOGRAPHY by Rust, JAZZ
RECORDS (1942-196) by Jespen, V-DISCS by Sears.
For a free catalog of Stash releases, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to: STASH, P.O. Box 390, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215
ST122
JACKET MADE IN CANADA
© 1984 STASH RECORDS
"AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE"