Getting It On

Patience & Prudence - Tonight You Belong to Me

First up has to be one of the biggest Lolita singles of all time, Patience & Prudence's ethereal, innocently sexy "Tonight You Belong to Me." At the time of recording, they were age 9 and 12, respectively.

Patience and Prudence McIntyre were the daughters of Mark McIntyre, who had played piano for Frank Sinatra during his last few years at Columbia Records. McIntyre recorded his two daughters doing a version of the song while he was cutting it as a demo for some cabaret singer or other. McIntyre played their version for a musician friend of his, who played it for a musician friend of his, and one thing led to another and the song was actually released as a single on Liberty Records, hitting #4 on the charts in 1956. The two girls actually recorded a few good singles after that (and had a "reunion" on some Dick Clark show in the 1970s), but they mostly disappeared from the charts into one-hit-wonderland.

Wynonie Harris - Keep on Churnin'

Note to self: remember to remind everyone that Wynonie Harris was fucking AWESOME. If you've never had the pleasure of hearing his extraordinary hollering or sample his glorious tales of boozing and whoring, your life is fundamentally incomplete. Prurience aside, he made some of the catchiest and most raucous 1950s R&B you're ever going to hear. There will be a post exclusively devoted to Wynonie some time in the future.

And this song? Well, no need to reprint the lyrics when you can just listen, but they have to do with... churning butter... 'until the butter comes,' and how frothy one's paddle can get during such activities.

Butterbeans & Susie - Elevator Papa, Switchboard Mama

Butterbeans and Susie was the performing name on the black vaudeville circuit of husband and wife team Joe and Susie Edwards. They were mostly a comedy act (Butterbeans being the incompetent, inadequate husband, and Susie the capable but sexually frustrated wife), but they cut a bunch of blues sides like this one for Okeh from the late 20s to early 50s, most of them of a similarly comic/raunchy nature. Suffice to say, this song's all about elevators papas looking to help you 'go down' and switchboard mamas who need their dials twiddled.

The Dominoes - Sixty Minute Man

This is from a great compilation that everyone should own called Risque Rhythm: Nasty 50s R&B. All the songs are primo slices of good rockin' & rollin' 50s raunch.

The Dominoes actually started out as a gospel group in the 1940s, and for a little over a decade met with great success, while also enduring numerous lineup changes and a shift to secular R&B. At the point this song was cut...I'm not really sure who's singing the lead here. Clyde McPhatter (who went on to form the Drifters, pre Ben E. King) and Jackie Wilson (who's, you know, JACKIE WILSON) both sung with the Dominoes for a few years. But I don't think this is McPhatter singing, and it's definitely not Wilson. I don't have the liner notes handy, either. Anybody know?

[edit: I have been informed that this is Bill Brown singing]

Bo Carter - My Pencil Won't Write No More

And here we have the most incorrigible of pre-war blues double-entendreists, Bo Carter, author of such classic sides as "Don't Mash My Digger so Deep," "Pin in Your Cushion," "Banana in Your Fruit Basket," "Ram Rod Daddy," "Pussy Cat Blues," and this here melancholy meditation on the sad event of, you know, one's pencil being all out of lead. Not that I would know anything about that.