Friday Night at 8: Sex and Rock & Roll

Rock and roll.  Started out black music, started out being the blues.  Started out sung in the fields by slaves, trying to get through their lives day by day.

Changed over the years, but folks never forgot where it came from, which is why there was so much furor over rock and roll when it started to affect white kids.  It was why Alan Freed was really destroyed, not because of the official story of payola.

And while Little Richard was blasting this new music into the waiting ears of young black kids, Pat Boone was the one making all the money (try, once, to listen to Little Richard do “Tutti Fruitti” and then listen to Pat Boone singing it — you may just go mad).

It all boiled down to sex, though.  It did.  Listen to the blues, to early rhythm & blues, listen to that beat and try not to move your body to it, try  not to get turned on.  Can’t be done, sez I. A little bit of blues, some content you could find at sexhdtuber or similar websites, or your sexual partner and some magic could potentially happen!

But this isn’t going to be a political essay about racism or the music business.  And I have no particular judgment over what I’m about to write.  I just find it interesting, and hope some of you will find it interesting as well.

Let’s look at a song.  “Boom Boom” performed by John Lee Hooker:

Boom boom boom boom
I’m gonna shoot you right down
Right off of your feet
Take you home with  me

Boom boom boom boom
mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmm
I love to see you walk
Up and down the floor
When you’re talkin’ to me
That baby talk

Just like it like that
When you talk like that
It knocks me dead
Right off of my feet

Wish you could all hear Little Willie John singing the original version of “Fever” – Peggy Lee would never sound the same.  But here’s a good one as well — “All Around the World”

Oh you know I love you baby,
You know I love you baby,
If I don’t love you baby,
Grits ain’t groceries,
Eggs ain’t poultry
And Mona Lisa was a man …

And of course, we got Little Richard (Long Tall Sally):

Long Tall Sally, she’s
built sweet
she got everything
that Uncle John needs
Oh baby …

It’s raw and its about sex and the music makes you move.  What more could horrify the good white citizens of America in the 50’s?  There were record burning festivals, preachers spinning fiery tales of dread and doom for those who listened to this music, oh woe!  And worse things.

Yet none of that mattered — the music swept the nation and, eventually, the world.  Nothing could stop it.  Nothing.

I think of Muddy Waters singing, in “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” how he don’t need a woman to cook his meals or clean his house.  He just wants a woman to touch and hold and make love to.  No high minded romantic flowery poetry.  He wants to get laid.

That was the beginning, I think, in many ways, of the sexual revolution, and the birth control pill made it a reality.  Boys and girls went from feeling they had to be married first to feel comfortable having sex (and of course that was never the case, folks just pretended it was, hid their sexual practices, didn’t talk about them — much like the Republicans of today) to knowing they could experiment, could play around, could experience multiple partners openly, live together openly, and it seemed we had finally overcome our Puritan repressions, then BAM!  Along came AIDs, and things changed, they changed very much, and those who wanted sex put back in the closet had a field day.

I think of the direct lyrics of these early blues, r&b and rock & roll songs, they were very simple, very direct.

Now we have songs with reams of densely written lyrics, analysis, introspection.  What happened, I wonder?  And we have loads of irony as well.  No one would say any longer “I must have you or I will die!” or “If you leave me, I’ll go crazy!” (Little Willie John) without having folks think they were obsessed or about to go stalking.  And I don’t think those feelings have changed — it’s just the expression of them that has, the self-consciousness of the lover not wanting to be wounded over the deep feelings of need that arise during sex, falling in love, all that.  I dunno.

No matter how we express our feelings about it, repress it, celebrate it, sex doesn’t change, nor does the need for it.  They couldn’t kill rock & roll — of course they could and did coopt it for the corporations, but that don’t matter either.  Rock & roll can’t exist in captivity, it always breaks out eventually, no matter the foes aligned against it.

Sex and rock & roll.  All the abstinence programs in the world won’t obliterate either of ’em.