I’m not buying this. Top 40 music was full of sexual innuendo. This reference, on top of not being understood by many people, was not in the least bit scandalous. That’s part of the joke, it’s prurience was something greatly exagerrated in the past. Allan Sherman’s music didn’t get much air play until this song came along, and only because it had a more general appeal than the rest of his music because of the juvenile theme. He certainly didn’t write it with foreknowledge of it’s great success, and because it wasn’t the devil’s music nobody would have been concerned with this one lyric.
Despite Boston’s delicate sensibilities (obviously not duplicated elsewhere, as the song was #1 in the nation for four straight weeks), it was very clear from the context of the song that no such activity was going on.
The “problem” in “Wake Up Little Susie” is in others’ imaginations. The problem of reading Joyce to pre-sexual, pre-adolescent campers in Sherman’s song is presented as something that actually happened (if you go with that interpretation).
Of course your reasoning doesn’t explain why a coach, worried about his boys being sissies would read girly-poetry to them, especially since poetry, in and of itself is “sissy” per 1963 standards and this particular poetry was written by a sissy-looking beatnik AND is depressing.
On the other hand, in 1963 if you wanted to “de-sissify” someone, you might very well buy them a copy of Playboy…or read to them from a “dirty” book.
There’s only one way to read that stanza so it makes any internal sense whatsoever. And it’s the “make them men by reading them a dirty-book” version, not the “desissify boys by reading them poems.” version
Mine also had "waiters’. The oldest kids (I was one of those) were "Counselors’ and the younger kids or from poorer families were kitchen helpers. You could almost work your way thru camp by being a “waiter” and us Counselors got full boat. And yes, we thought the waiters were beneath contempt.
Fair enough, that’s my limited experience with organised camping coming through - my experience was with the boy scouts with a troop of about 30, and the mention of waiters made me picture the scenes in comics where there’s a rival camp where posh kids are served food from silver trays by guys in black tie and tails.
So what? The song is unequivocally about sex; the fact that the sex didn’t actually occur is beside the point. This debunks your claim that there was never “even a hint” of blue humor in the Top 40 in those days. It doesn’t even have to be about actual sex to be “blue” anyway, look at “Little Egypt” for another example of a “naughty” comedy song that made the Top 40 before “Hello Muddah.”
Besides that, the problem with Ulysses is mostly imaginary, too. If the kids are just starting camp, the coach reading from the book wouldn’t have gotten past chapter one. There’s nothing much dirty in the early chapters of Ulysses unless they know enough French to get the blasphemous joke about the Virgin Mary and the sacre pigeon. The most titillating thing in there for a group of pre-teens is the word “snotgreen.” I have no reason to assume that Allan Sherman ever actually read Ulysses. Like most people, he probably knew it mainly by reputation, and the whole point of the joke rests on that reputation, not the book’s actual content.
Adding to that,
1956–Jim Lowe, Green Door (guy’s trying to get into an adult club of some sort)
1959–Bobby Darrin, Mack The Knife (guy presented as a cool guy commits murder)
1959–Lloyd Price, Stagger Lee (again, brutal murder, victim begging for his life, crying and referencing his soon-to-be widow and orphans, is shot)
1959–Connie Francis, Lipstick on your Collar (infidelity)
1960–Shirelles, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (out of wedlock sex…very obvious sex too)
1961–Dion, Runaround Sue (guy gets his heart broken by a slut)
1962–Dion, The Wanderer (this time it’s the guy who’s the slut and he’s bragging about it)
This is just from a quick, casual skim of the Billboard Top 50 from 1956-1963 and there’s clear, obvious sex and some pretty brutal violence. Your weirdly rosy picture of music from 1963 back all being about as pure as “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” is obviously wrong. I’d be willing to bet there’s a lot more if I actually tried to remember the lyrics.
Finally, according to Billboard, “Letter From Camp (Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda)” was number 83, so every one of these songs was better known and purchased more, despite the sex, infidelity and violence.
One can try to hand-wave away each individual aspect of the song, but when taken in totality only one explanation fits all the facts well and remains in the spirit of the song itself.
Actually, “Wake Up Little Susie” is not “unequivocally about sex.” What percentage of kids 17 or younger were sexually active in 1957? It’s more likely that in the minds of most, the kids would have been thought guilty of “making out” at the “submarine races” (more than enough in 1957 to ensure that their reputation would be shot).
There’s no indication that Don and Susie were “those” kinds of kids, so the idea that they were out having sex would have been unthinkable. You have to listen to the song with 1957 ears, not 2014 ones, and remember that the sexual revolution made possible by The Pill was still over 10 years away. Dread of “getting a girl pregnant” was enough for the greater percentage of 16-17-year olds to keep their dicks in their pants.
The fact that the sex doesn’t actually occur is very much to the point. Even if you grant the interpretation that “everyone will think we were out fucking till 4:00 a.m.” (which I don’t), the song provides an entirely innocent alternate explanation — that happens to be the truth. And it provides it right from the first verse of the song, so there’s not even the opportunity for the listener to be temporarily fooled, as he/she might be with a song like “Shaving Cream.”
It debunks nothing. First of all, as you say, “Little Egypt” is about titillation, not sex. No sex occurs in the song (unless you count the fact that the narrator, down the road, marries Little Egypt and has kids with her, which was a completely accepted theme in any song of the day).
My claim did not involve the term “blue”; my claim was that there was nothing portrayed in Top 40 music “within 100 miles” of the concept of reading a book widely regarded (correctly or incorrectly) as pornographic to 8- to 10-year-olds.
You might want to consider that over 2 1/2 years later, Lou Christie had to alter the lyrics in his song “Rhapsody in the Rain” from “in that car, our love went much too far” and “makin’ love in the rain” to “love came like a shooting star” and “fell in love in the rain” after loud complaints from…the same radio programmers I spoke of earlier. Even after doing this, many radio stations still banned it, and a song that likely would have otherwise followed “Lightning Strikes” to #1 instead stalled at #16.
Neither “Susie” nor “Egypt” depicts anything illegal. (An adult attending a peep show was not breaking the law.) By contrast, reading what was perceived to be pornographic literature to 8- to 10-year-olds was just as illegal in 1963 as it is today, if not more so — not to mention considerably more shocking to the sensibilities. If you can’t see the difference in degree between this and the two examples you gave, then I don’t know what more I can say.
And again, you’re making my case for me. The book’s “scandalous reputation,” whether deserved or not, was what radio programmers would have been going by, and if the passage were seen as unequivocally about Joyce’s novel, there would have been complaints just as strenuous (if not more so) than there were later about “Rhapsody in the Rain.”
The “clean” interpretation (Homer) had to be available and plausible in order for the song to ever make it on the Top 40 airwaves. It was both, and it was the interpretation the greater number of both programmers and listeners went by.
Uh-huh.
Every single one of these songs can be interpreted by the widely accepted standard of romantic love that was coin of the realm for the day, one in which sex never entered the picture. Some don’t even have anything to do with that!
One by one:
Green Door – So every club that requires a secret password is the site of wild sex orgies? None of them could just be an after-hours drinking establishment with a members-only policy? (This is the silliest example out of all the ones you’ve listed…thanks for leading with it!)
Mack the Knife and Stagger Lee – Neither of these were “teen” songs, but rather a song from a 1929 operetta and an R&B song of uncertain but quite ancient origins. Most of those who made “Mack the Knife” a hit had no clue of the context in which it appeared in the Threepenny Opera. They just heard a swingin’ Sinatra-like tune with an appealing melody. And you’re completely off about “Stagger Lee.” The violence in that song (at least in Lloyd Price’s Top 40 version) stems from a gambling incident and has zero to do with sex.
Lipstick on Your Collar – Once again, listen with 1950s ears. The term and general concept of “cheating” had to do with simply being seen with someone other that the one you were supposed to be pledged to, and was not seen in a sexual way at all.
Will You Love Me Tomorrow – This song can certainly be interpreted as having to do with a sexual encounter, and has been — in retrospect…but again, given the standards of the day, it didn’t have to be. I can assure you that the millions of young teen and pre-teenage girls who bought it in 1960 were not hearing the lyrics in terms of “Oooh, he fucked her last night.”
Runaround Sue and The Wanderer – The girl in “Sue” is accused of “going out” with other guys, not screwing them. The guy in The Wanderer is being macho and just as interested in his “two fists of iron” as he is in the girls he casts aside. Is he sleeping with him? Certainly possible, but there’s nothing in the lyrics that refers to this. I would caution you that, just because you choose to take this meaning is no sign that other listeners did.
I’m curious as to whether you were around when these songs were hits. My guess is you were not, as you seem unaware of how they were perceived at the time. Did some listeners to Top 40 radio nod and wink knowingly at some lyrics? Probably so. Was this highly sexualized subtext you present actually a part of the majority of 8- to 17-year-old listeners’ perceptions? The answer is No.
Be my guest. Find a Top 40 song from 1963 or earlier that can ONLY and UNEQUIVOCALLY be interpreted as “The characters described in this song’s lyrics are having sex.” Point to the lyrics that make this interpretation absolutely unmistakeable.
You need to throw out whatever reference work you’re using. Sherman’s song reached #2 on the Billboard charts in late summer of 1963 and remained in that position for three weeks.
Blue Suede Shoes? 
OK, you got me — as long as you allow for a fairly wide interpretation of “blue.”
I will admit to overstating the case, but are you going to dust off your hands now and walk away with “My work is done here”?
Will you address the major points in my post? Or will you ignore them as you’ve done with many others?
What does that matter? At least in “Hello Muddah” the theoretically illegal shenanigans are *supposed *to be bad and alarming. A year later, in “Pop Hates the Beatles,” Sherman was *advocating *a potentially deadly assault on the Beatles (“We’ll throw them in Boston Harbor”). Real people, not fictional characters like the crew of Camp Granada! Sherman’s criminal tendencies are thereby well established. 
See also contemporary hit songs involving murder, like “El Paso” or the aforementioned “Stagger Lee,” “Mack the Knife,” etc. Why on earth should Sherman cavil at mentioning criminal activity in a song?
First off, it’s just occurred to me that “Reads to us from some book called Ulysses”, “Reads to us some poem called Ulysses”, and “Reads to us about old Greek Ulysses” all scan, so it’s likely that the ambiguity was intended and the question of what “really happened” was a red herring. I’m seeing some acknowledgement of the ambiguity in DChord568’s posts - DChord568, is your position that the Odyessy is “the real reading” or a plausible interpretation of a deliberately ambiguous line?
This is the difficulty of talking about different levels of fiction. Alligators in a lake where kids camp are unlikely, whether or not a kid imagining them is, and I see escalation in both severity and implausibility - for example in the (imagined/invented) ailments sustained by Li’l Allan’s fellow campers - from poison ivy, through ptomaine poisoning to malaria. I’m coming from the position that there are features of the song as a comedy song that are more important than the question of whether or not a kid would literally write a letter like the lyrics of the song - I think an earlier post where people expend far more mental effort than is needed to get a joke in order to construct a plausible scenario for the “please disregard this letter” punchline demonstrates that.
You keep going back to this. In 1963 the scandalous of Ulysses was a joke. It is part of the joke Sherman is making in that line. It’s meant to sound scandalous even though it isn’t. It’s not some terrible reference that would cause problems for a radio station.
As for the other songs, they contain double entendres to provide the excuse that they aren’t about what they obviously were about. If you have any argument at all it would be that a DJ in Fundietown Arkansas who had some semi-literate station manager who thought Ulysses was some scandalous book would tell his manager that the line actually referred to the guy in Homer’s Odyssey. And I find that unlikely.
On the contrary…the “hand-waving” is being done by those who support the Joyce hypothesis.
What passage from Joyce’s Ulysses does the coach read to ensure his charges won’t be sissies? I’ve asked that question countless times, and no one has yet seen fit to give an answer. (Hand-waved away.)
How does the coach figure he can possibly get away with something as shocking (not to mention highly illegal) as reading “pornographic” literature to 8- to 10-year-olds? (Hand-waved away.)
How would AM Top 40 radio programmers allow a song with a passage unequivocally referencing reading “pornographic” literature to 8- to 10-year-olds to be aired — particularly when they banned far less offensive songs? I haven’t even had to mention “Louie Louie” yet, which prompted not only widespread bannings but an FBI investigation — all over lyrics that were “unintelligible at any speed” but “thought” to be dirty. (Hand-waved away.)
How would a reference to a book that, according to so many here, was widely seen as controversial and most certainly unfit for consumption by 8- to 10-year-olds not spark widespread outrage among listeners and the VERY active guardians of morality who were about in this era? (Hand-waved away.)
Anyone who wants to move away from vague generalities into specifics is welcome to (for the first time) answer any of these questions.
One hint, though: Saying “It’s just comedy, so everything is OK and nothing has to make sense”? That’s hand-waving.
I’m going to address this one only because if you don’t see “sex” in the following lyrics, even by 1963 standards, we will never sucessfully communicate.
There’s only one possible reading that makes any sense. She’s worried that he won’t respect her after “a moment’s pleasure”. That cannot rationally refer to kissing, hugging, necking or anything else. (You can’t sigh when kissing, in any case) The song is a cautionary tale by Carole King warning girls that a moment of pleasure might equal a lifetime of regret. There is no possible way to read those lyrics any other way rationally.
See above. It’s clearly a cautionary tale of sex vs lasting love. Most of the others are the same. They’re about sex and/or violence and they were higher on the billboard charts than Sherman’s.
I’m using a wiki mirror of Billboard.
What about you?
And despite me asking this three times as of now, you still haven’t explained how any interpretation other than the “Joyce’s ‘dirty’ book” one of Sherman’s song makes any sense in the context of the “sissy” line.
1963–for a macho coach worried that his boys are effeminate, how does reading girly/sissy poems written by a foppish-looking beatnik “cure” them of being sissies? On the other hand, reading them a “dirty” book, like giving them a Playboy would cure them of sissy-ness.
This has been answered by 2-3 dozen people and you ignore the answer. Once more, with feeling. The coach did NOT read anything to the kid. The kid wants to get out of camp and is throwing reasons against the wall even if they make no sense (an alligator? really?)
The line could just as easily read:
And the head coach wants no gay boys
So he shows us pictures from his stash of Playboys[sup]tm[/sup]
- As has been pointed out, the Supreme Court itself ruled that Joyce’s Ulysses was not pornographic something like 30 years earlier. Kids would still get the pop-culture notion that it was “dirty” but there’s nothing particularly dirty in it. Hence…humor.
- The coach didn’t “figure” he could get away with anything, because the kid is trying to get mom and dad to pull him from camp by coming up with successively more lunatic reasons the camp isn’t fit for minors. (Malaria? In the US? In 1963? Kids being kidnapped?)
You keep using the term “Hand waved” when you mean “Successfully rebutted the argument I made”. Perhaps you were unaware that the two terms aren’t synonyms?
My point was to differentiate between the levels of activity being described. Their legality vs. illegality is one way to do this, but there are others.
The general answer to your question above lies in the same phenomenon still present in movie ratings to this very day. A film with bucketloads of graphic violence and gore featuring characters with absolutely no conscience or moral fiber will get a PG-13 rating, whereas one with zero violence but sexual content among consenting adults will get an R.
My point, which you’ve yet to address, is that reading sexually oriented materials to 8- to 10-year olds was (and for that matter, is) in a different category from an adult attending a peep show.