[Dixielandjazz] Songs about F......: Sex & Music

[Stan Brager]

Steve;

Perhaps the writer doesn't realize that there have been songs with sexual
content for many hundreds of years if not earlier. I recently picked-up a CD
titled "So Quick, So Hot, So Mad" and sub-titled "Elizabethan Bawdy Songs"
which is now stored next to "The Art of The Bawdy Song". Both have songs
written in the 1500 and 1600's. I don't doubt that there were bawdy songs in
ancient Greece and other eras and cultures as well.

Stan
Stan Brager



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen G Barbone [mailto:barbonestreet at earthlink.net]
> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 9:08 AM
> To: DJML
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Songs about F......: Sex & Music
> 
> Caution X Rated. From the blogosphere. Though the writer alludes to the
> relationship between Traditional Jazz and sex, he is perhaps to young,
> or maybe just ignorant of the sexual relationship between young people
> and "Jazz". from 1917 through the 1920s and later. Time blurs memory as
> we now call it "Art" music. Or is "Art" a code word for "Sex"?
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
> 
> 
> Music
> Songs about f.....g: sex & music
> 
> By Doug Bleggi
> Sex and music have enjoyed a long relationship, even before the so-
> called lurid dawn of rock & roll. Both blues and jazz were rife with
> sexual energy. Whether it was the backwoods of acoustic artists like
> Robert Johnson or the jazz hall sauntering of vocalists like Bessie
> Smith, sex was an essential part of the blues. Likewise jazz music,
> from its surge to popularity in the roaring twenties through the days
> of big band and Dixieland, brought couples together, and very close.
> 
> Like all music genres, the increasing familiarity makes it become the
> norm. The emergence of bebop turned swing into 'old man music,' while
> rock & roll became not just a new beacon for sexuality expressed
> through music, but it was the first time a genre of music was
> specifically aimed at, and taken in by, teenagers.
> 
> Teen heart throbs existed before the '50s of course. The character of
> Johnny Fontaine for instance, in "The Godfather" was heavily based on
> the career of Frank Sinatra in the early 1940s, with young girls
> screaming and crying when he would sing (the notion that The Beatles
> started this trend is most definitely false). But the pop singers of
> World War II sung innocent love songs. Later, when Big Joe Turner sang
> ""I've been holdin' it in, way down underneath / You make me roll my
> eyes, baby, make me grit my teeth," there was no question what he was
> talking about. Parents collectively were outraged with the genre, a
> natural instinct - never before had children taken such a keen
> interest in a style of music. While cheery and playful, there was a
> dirty subtext to a lot of rock & roll songs and the B-film industry
> followed suit, offering cheap films that gave early rockers a place to
> lay down the dirty sax and pounding piano chords for kids who wanted
> to make out with their dates in movie theaters.
> 
> While the drive-in theaters were like the Wild West in terms of what
> it could get away with, television made a more concerted effort to
> desensitize rock & roll. "The Ed Sullivan Show" for instance was
> oblivious to the sexual power of Elvis Presley (so was Elvis
> apparently) when they first booked him in 1956, but when concerns rose
> about the singer's "suggestive" dance moves, his third appearance
> famously featured him shot from the waist up. The plan of course
> backfired, with Presley breaking into some hip swiveling at the
> conclusion of "Peace in the Valley" (of all songs!) which given the
> tight shot on the singer's torso, only made his off-camera gyrations
> all the more dirty.
> 
> So because the rock & rollers essentially won out over the repressive
> parents and TV hosts, have we become the lecherous fuck-obsessed pigs
> that they assured us Elvis Presley's hips would make us? Of course not
> at all, or at least not any more than the kids back then. Rock & roll
> didn't make teenagers have sex with each other - a natural progression
> of the teenager in society beget the need for a culture that fed those
> progressed desires. We (and by we I mean all music fans) didn't like
> rock & roll simply because it was different. We took it in because
> it's what we needed, and if we needed to break out of sexual
> suppression, rock was there to undo the knots.
> 
> The  sexual freedom that of today that is supposedly new is not a
> dissent but merely evolution. When Lady Gaga informs us about her
> desire to ride our disco stick, or when Ke$ha demands, "just show me
> where your dick's at," it's shocking, simply because it's a new way
> that someone figured out a way to say "I just wanna fuck" in a pop
> song. Whether or not you care for either "LoveGame" or "Blah-Blah-
> Blah" is irrelevant - it's mainstream pop music and is completely akin
> to Arthur Mckay singing about getting a handjob in "She Squeezed My
> Lemon" nearly 80 years ago. It was lurid, disgusting, raunchy-but most
> of all, it was a sign of the times, and we as a society turned out
> fine, not in spite of it, but because of it.