Sweet music Aural sex


Music and sensual pleasure have been perfect bedfellows for almost a century of recorded sound. Nigel Summerley explores the many forms of the erotic song


‘


I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb / I got somethin’ between my legs’ll make a dead man come...’ Even by today’s standards, this


is a lyric you might think twice about putting on record. But Lucille Bogan doesn’t sound like she had many qualms about this fairly direct couplet when she recorded a blues number called ‘Shave ’em Dry’ in 1935. Te blues was always dirty. Tey just usually cleaned it up a bit when they went into the studio. You think Led Zeppelin were breaking


some sort of taboo when Robert Plant wailed: ‘Squeeze me baby, ’til the juice runs down my leg’ in 1969? Not really. Te much more credibly wicked Robert Johnson had been there in 1937 with ‘You can squeeze my lemon till juice run down my leg’ on ‘Travelling


Riverside Blues’ (Led Zep were always adept at ‘borrowing’). Such double-entendres were endless. It’s


unlikely Lightnin’ Hopkins had dog training on his mind when entreating ‘Let Me Play With Your Poodle’ (1947). Or that Blind Boy Fuller was thinking of taking up apiary when he sang ‘Sweet Honey Hole’ (1937). Muddy Waters got down and direct with


his wonderful ‘I can make love to you, girl... in five minutes’ time’ on ‘Mannish Boy’ (check out his 1976 ‘live’ version, recorded when he was 63 and sounding like he still meant every word). ‘Ain’t that a man?’ he sang – and the question needed no answer.


Hot vinyl: Roxy Music’s Country Life album cover, shot by Eric Boman and controversial in the US, Spain, and the Netherlands, where the artwork was censored


Reggae’s rhythms are sensual enough,


but the addition of naughty lyrics turns up the heat. Yellowman is a rogue-ish singer whose sinuous vocals ooze sex. ‘Put your foot ’pon me shoulder, let me rub your vagina... Up on the bed, open your leg’ is one of his more restrained lyrics, from ‘Bedroom Mazuka’ (1986). In comparison, Bob Marley is understated with his ‘All you got to do, honey, is keep it in and stir [pronounced “steer”] it up’ from ‘Stir It Up’ (1967). And if you’re any doubt as to what he’s getting at, he explains: ‘I’ll push the wood, I’ll blaze your fire’ (and he’s no boy scout). Sometimes the words are incidental – the


right voice and feel can almost do it all. Listen to how laid-way-back rocker JJ Cale half- whispers ‘Aſter midnight, all gonna be peaches and cream’ in ‘Aſter Midnight’ (1972) or the no-messing-about sensuality of Marvin Gaye on ‘Let’s Get It On’ (1973). Most of the singers mentioned here could


make the proverbial phone book sound sexual. Not least, Julie London whose ‘Ooooo... waaaw... tuuur... meh... lon...’ raises the temperature in just five syllables, and that’s long before she gets to ‘makes you almost want to eat the seed’ in ‘Watermelon Man’ (1965). Such intimate confessions perhaps make for the most erotic songs of all. When Amy Winehouse sings ‘You are everything – he means nothing to me / I can’t even remember his name / Why’re you so upset? / Baby, you weren’t there and I was thinking of you when I came’ on ‘I Heard Love is Blind’ (2003), it is a revelatory declaration of love that also drips with sex. So does the following less-is-more lyric from country star Lucinda Williams on ‘Right In Time’ (1998), delivered in what sounds like a state of self-pleasured arousal: ‘I take off my watch and my earrings / My bracelets and everything / Lie on my back and moan at the ceiling / Oh my baby / Tink about you and that long ride / I bite my nails I get weak inside / Reach over and turn off the light.’ It almost feels as if we shouldn’t be listening in at all...


20 The Amorist May 2017


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