And those of you who will not sing
You must be playing with your own ding-a-ling.
If that doesn’t make the point, what would?
Well, there’s the rude-parody version of the English folk song John Peel in honour of that famous exponent of the now-forbidden sport of fox-hunting. I first heard aforesaid version, in the 1970s: but would be willing to bet heavily on its having been around for many, many decades before that.
A sample:
"Do ye ken John Peel, with his coat so gay –
A very funny fellow, some folks say:
He doesn’t wank in the normal way,
But his hounds lick his horn in the morning.
When you wake up in the morning, and you’re feeling simply grand,
And you get a funny feeling in your seminary gland –
If you haven’t got a woman, what’s the matter with your hand?
As you revel in the joys of masturbation.
[Rude-version chorus]:
Cats on the rooftops, cats on the tiles,
Cats with syphilis, and cats with piles,
Cats with their arseholes wreathed in smiles
As they revel in the joys of masturbation / fornication."
I’m not sure if they were part of the sung bits, but Aristophanes’ The Clouds contains references to masturbation.
Hmmm, looking at the lyrics, I’d say my personal interpretation would be mutual masturbation- a hand job, to use the parlance of our times. I think it deserves an honorable mention!
I’ll give these a listen. Thanks!
Thanks for mentioning this, Skammer. I only knew the Berry version from 1972. To find out that it’s actually 20 years older is great news!
ThelmaLou, thanks for the link to the older Thread!
I remember an old blues tune sung by a woman, on my buddy’s mix tape - “Rubbin’ On That Darned Old Thing.” I got him to copy that tape for me, but of course it’s long gone now.
Not a particularly old song, but the David Allan Coe classic Cum Stains On The Pillow fits the bill.
Apparently, that was originally recorded by Lawrence Welks(!) in 1943. Makes sense as a WWII song.
On reflection, I don’t actually know the date on the Roy Rogers recording.
I’m highly skeptical of the claim that “Cleanin’ My Rifle (and Dreamin’ of You)” was actually intended to be about masturbation. Obviously, given its mainstream popular-song status, it was not perceived in that way by any significant portion of the general public.
Rifle cleaning was something servicemen had to do routinely, which they did publicly in the presence of their fellow soldiers. It required having the gun unloaded so there would be no chance of actually firing anything, and it required shoving a cleaning rod down the rifle bore, which I think most guys would regard as more painful than sexy if applied to genitalia.
I defer to the experience of actual WWII vets as to how this song was interpreted, but I’m not convinced that just because modern non-soldiers tee-hee at the phrase “cleaning my rifle” it would have sounded dirty to the servicemen themselves. Sometimes, a military camp chore is just a mliitary camp chore.
And sometimes it’s a masturbation reference.
By the lyrics, I’d say that it can’t not be about masturbation. Would they have broadcast such a song as part of an armed services program, as appears to be the case in this recording?
I’m reminded of the SNAFU song of which I saw a video a couple of decades ago, and on YouTube I found what is probably the same performance. I remembered it being Andrews Sisters, but that doesn’t turn up. Not only is the song pointedly coy about what SNAFU means, there is even a gag about the word ‘pot’. Also, I recall that the preface of an etymology book I have (possibly Partridge, in the garage somewhere) that the term SNAFU was believed to have been made-up slang. This is by way of arguing that the armed forces did in fact have people working just a bit blue quite on purpose.
I’m not saying “Cleaning My Rifle” was definitely about masturbation…
But pointing out that a song about masturbation wouldn’t have been performed by mainstream artists nor would have gotten mainstream play doesn’t necessarily prove that the song wasn’t about masturbation.
Consider the 60s French pop song “Les Sucettes”. Singer France Gall was an 18 year old girl with a squeaky clean image. Songwriter Serge Gainsbourg was an old lech who thought it would be funny if he could get an 18 year old girl with a squeaky clean image to sing about blowjobs. Gall recorded the song having no idea it was about blowjobs. It got past her entire production team and her record label without anyone thinking, “Hey, this song is about blowjobs!” It wasn’t until the French music press had a field day laughing at this song that was obviously about blowjobs that anyone involved in the recording had it ever even dawn on them.
I’m sure if you’d ask Lawrence Welk or Roy Rogers, both of whom were always wholesome All-American figures, if “Cleaning My Rifle” was a song about masturbation they’d be offended at the suggestion. The public listening to the song on the radio, I’m sure they’d absolutley never consider the song had anything but the literal meaning.
None of this proves that songwriter Allie Wrubel didn’t write the song laughing to himself “Heh heh! ‘Cleaning My Rifle!’ Heh heh!” The guy was one of the first inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. If he wanted to write a coded song about jerking off that would fly under the radar he certainly had the skills to do so. Certainly there were any number of non-phallic routine duties a serviceman had to attend to during which he could dream of his sweetie back home.
IMO the kids’ song, Jimmy Crack Corn is about masturbation
It’s not a children’s song, it’s a minstrel song and I have never heard an interpretation close to that. It’s about a slave and his master’s death. Crack corn is often interpreted as having to do with getting drunk off of corn whiskey.