[Dixielandjazz] Songs about Sex are hot sellers.

[Stan Brager]

I just bought the CD "Sexcapades" which features songs of love, lust and
depravity recorded by Clara Smith, Dinah Washington, Georgia White, Alberta
Hunter, Lil Johnson, Blue Lu Barker and others. The musicians include
Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, Lucky Thompson' All Stars, Charlie Green,
Porter Grainger, Danny Barker Sextet, Earle Warren, Buck Clayton.

I was surprised that "My Handy Man", "Six or Seven Times" and "Empty Bed
Blues" weren't among the selections.

Of course, the only reason I bought it was a song about Christmas "I Know
What You Want For Christmas (But I Don't Know How To Wrap It)".

Stan
Stan Brager

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen G Barbone [mailto:barbonestreet at earthlink.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 7:00 AM
> To: DJML; tradjazz at list.okom.com
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Songs about Sex are hot sellers.
> 
> But of course, we all knew this. Pity is, they don't mention those
> sexy "jazz" songs. Is there a lesson  here? Perhaps that if we wish
> OKOM to remain a relevant music to young people, we need less
> "artistic" reprises of old tunes and more sexy reprises of those old
> tunes?
> 
> That's a tough sell via suspenders, straw hats and arm garters. <grin>
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
> 
> 
> This Just In: Study Shows Songs About Sex Are Hot Sellers
> 
> 
> NY TIMES - OCTOBER 4, 2011, 9:21 AM - BY JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR
> 
> Psychologists sometimes have a way of proving what you always
> suspected was true. A recent study of popular song lyrics done at the
> State University of New York in Albany shows not only that messages
> about sexual relationships dominate the songs at the top of the
> charts, but also that songs about sex sell better than other songs.
> Perhaps more surprising were the study's findings on the gaps between
> genres. The authors of the study, Dawn R. Hobbs and Gordon G. Gallup
> Jr., found a large difference between the "reproductive messages"
> embedded in country music and those found in pop and R&B. Successful
> country songs tended to have messages - in descending order - about
> long-term commitment to marriage, parenting children, break-ups and
> oaths of fidelity.
> On the other hand, the top three themes in songs on pop charts were,
> in order, the singer's sex appeal, a person's promiscuity and one-
> night stands. For R&B songs that made it to the top, the most frequent
> themes were, in order, the singer's sex appeal, boasts about the
> singer's wealth as it relates to finding a mate, and descriptions of
> erotic acts.
> In other words, country songwriters tend to write about mature, adult
> relationships, while pop and R&B songwriters write more about hooking
> up with someone at the local nightclub.
> The authors analyzed 174 songs that made it into the Top Ten in 2009
> and found 92 percent of them had one or more themes from a long list
> of 19 categories of messages related to evolutionary biology, from
> descriptions of genitalia to keeping tabs on a mate. They also looked
> at lyrics for Top Ten songs going back in time for 60 years, in 10-
> year increments.
> The nature of pop music has not changed much, the authors said. The
> number and kinds of messages relating to courtship and finding a mate
> remained stable in the country and pop genres, but in R&B there was a
> sharp rise in such messages over the last 20 years, the study found.
> In general, hip-hop and R&B songwriters talk more about sex and sexual
> relationships. The country songs analyzed in 2009 had about 340
> references to sexual issues, or about 6 per song, while roughly the
> same number of top R & B songs had 973 references to those topics, or
> 17 per song. (Pop songs were in the middle, with 513 reproductive
> messages, or 9 per song.)
> What's more, the authors found a direct correlation between the number
> of references to sex in a song and how well it did on the Billboard
> charts. The study was published in the most recent issue of the
> journal Evolutionary Psychology.