Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 23, 1992 TAG: 9201230098
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BENARDE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WRITERS RECALL HUMOR OF BANNED TUNES WITH RELEASE OF `RISQUE' COLLECTION
Singer-songwriter Hank Ballard's husky, jovial laugh is cascading over the phone lines from his southern California home.What's so funny?
The song titles on the recently released "Risque Rhythm: Nasty '50s R&B" (Rhino Records), an 18-song collection of the bluest rhythm and blues and early rock 'n' roll from 30 to 40 years ago. They're filled with humorous metaphors and double entendre: "My Man Stands Out," "It Ain't the Meat," "Keep On Churnin'," "Lemon Squeezing Daddy," "Sixty Minute Man," "Work With Me Annie" and others. Those songs are the forerunners of current hits like Naughty By Nature's "O.P.P.," a seductive celebration of sneaking around to do the wild thing, and the more graphic hit "Me So Horny" by Miami's 2 Live Crew.
The Rhino compilation reveals glaring differences between the sexual nature of songs from the dawn of rock 'n' roll and much of the bawdy rap and rock of today.
In the '50s, the songs mischievously winked at listeners. They were sly and subtle and had a playfulness and humor about them.
"I wrote those songs for fun; I was having fun with lyrics," said the 55-year-old Ballard, who wrote the suggestive hit "Work With Me Annie" in 1954 and followed with "Annie Had A Baby" and "Annie's Aunt Fanny." "You can laugh at them. I'm laughing now. Most of the stuff I did, you could read between the lines." Ballard is best known for immortalizing a dance with a song called "The Twist."
New Orleans songwriter Dave Bartholomew agrees with Ballard. His "Toy Bell," written in 1952 and performed by The Bees, is also part of the collection. It didn't become a hit until 20 years after he wrote it, when the social climate changed and Chuck Berry recorded the song under the title of "My Ding-A-Ling."
"We actually didn't say anything," Bartholomew, 71, said during a phone conversation from his home. "In those days, it was all in the mind. You couldn't be explicit in those days." Besides, he says, "In those days, I wanted to leave you guessing."
Today, much of the guesswork and humor has been replaced by in-your-face explicitness, violence, misogyny and anger.
"It's the difference between shock and titillation," said James Austin, the Rhino Records staffer who compiled the songs for the record. "Back then, it might make someone blush; you'd get a chuckle out of it. It was about having fun with sex. It was as simple as that."
Most of the songs on "Risque Rhythm" were banned from radio and denounced by clergymen. Ballard recalls priests and nuns in Boston running around the city removing "Work With Me Annie" from area jukeboxes. But the tunes flourished in jukeboxes, nightclubs and private parties and sold well in record stores. The song was No. 1 on the R&B charts for seven weeks in 1954.
Writing about a Louisville, Ky., girl he was dating, Ballard originally wanted to call the song "Rock With Me Annie" or "Roll With Me Annie." But at the time those titles were considered too suggestive. He substituted the word "work" because, "in the ghettos of Detroit [Ballard was working on a Ford assembly line when he wrote the song] the word work meant sex."
Later Etta James did a version called "Roll With Me Henry." Singer Georgia Gibbs would tame that a bit and call her version "Dance With Me Henry," Ballard said. The song was so popular that record company chief Sid Nathan of King Records, asked Ballard to "write some more of those dirty songs." "Work" is still selling, still "making noise after all these years," Ballard said.
Bartholomew, who co-wrote many of Fats Domino's greatest hits, didn't have as much initial good fortune with his one attempt at a blue tune.
"The idea I had at the time was to entertain people in nightclubs. It was great in the clubs," Bartholomew said. "In those days, when I first recorded the song, it was thrown in the trash can," he added. "It didn't come to life till Berry recorded it. It was too suggestive in those days. Berry recorded it in London in 1972. I was very surprised. That's when things started changing."
Both Bartholomew and Ballard say the change has been too drastic for them.
"We've come a long way," Bartholomew lamented. "Everything's changed. I liked it better then, than today. I don't want to be unfair to writers of today, but I wouldn't do it."
"2 Live Crew, they're too dirty for me, man, too far out," Ballard said. "I know it's about making money, but my morals are not that far down. It's not my kind of thing."