he reads to us from something called 'Ulysses'.

Cafe Society
261

I don’t know why anyone is still arguing with DChord. It was pointed out to him that the same artist in a sequel to the very song under discussion referred to Lenny Bruce, a comedian widely and only known for being offensive and blue before it was common in comedy, being brought to the camp to perform for the kids. DChord’s response was that the Lenny Bruce concert was scheduled (according to the lyrics) for the week after the song took place and so might never have happened, and if it did happen, there’s no way Bruce would have performed his adult material (i.e., any of his material) at the camp.

Talk about handwaving!

It’s the exact same joke by the exact same performer! Kids are being exposed to “adult” material by adults running the camp. Since Ulysses was found legally not to be obscene or pornographic long before Sherman wrote “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” and in fact was not dirty in any way kids would care about, and Bruce actually was blue and a victim of legal censorship at the time the song was written, the idea that the former would be scandalous but not the latter is incoherent. And the idea that if “Little Allan” had simply said that the coach planned to read from Joyce’s Ulysses (and not necessarily the non-existant dirty parts), then the reference would have been copacetic, but since it took place in an arguably (almost certainly) made-up/exaggerated account by a little boy, that it is somehow not only scandalous but positively unthinkable by 1960s standards . . . well, I’m not sure that actually qualifies as an idea. It has some concepts mushed together in a cargo-cult imitation of an argument, but I don’t think it represents anything actually thought or believed by the author; it’s simply a reflexive spewing forth of verbiage to avoid admitting that one might be wrong.

262

And yet you blithely **hand-wave **away the extremely pertinent point made by **Sherrerd **earlier in the thread that Sherman made an essentially identical joke in the sequel to this song, with Lenny Bruce replacing James Joyce.

ETA: Ninja’d. That’s what I get for actually taking a call while posting from the office. :stuck_out_tongue:

263

It doesn’t matter in the slightest how you or I interpret the lyrics of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” What matters is how they were interpreted AT THE TIME by radio programmers and the song’s listeners.

I will simply repeat my earlier statement: 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.” This audience was worried that the singer and the boy “made out” on their first date (which I will again assure you was FAR more common in 1960 that fucking) but that the boy won’t call her for the next date.

I’ll ask the question again: were you alive and sentient in 1960?

I don’t have to even follow this link to know that you’re looking at a year-end ranking of all 1963 songs against each other, not at their highest chart positions at the time of their release.

Each year features several songs that reached the #1 spot — as well as every other chart position, for that matter. (See smapti’s threads in this section and notice how that number varies.)

A song that reached #1 and stayed there for five weeks would rank higher in the year-end ratings than a song that reached #1 but stayed there for only four weeks. The number of total weeks a song remained in the Hot 100 also would factor into its year-end rating.

I’ll repeat: “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” reached #2 on the Billboard charts in late summer 1963 and remained there for three weeks. This is the statistic that matters, and if you try to argue against this, then I’m gonna have to tell you that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

The same way identified by many of the respondents to my survey…through action sequences that feature heroic acts. The nature of the author of The Odyssey is quite irrelevant and would be unknown to its audience — and I have to say it’s the first time I’ve ever heard Homer’s work described as consisting of “girly/sissy poems.”

I also stated (which you and everyone else has ignored) that 8- to 10-year-olds in 1963 were pre-sexual and wouldn’t have had a clue as to what was going on in the “dirty” scenes in Joyce’s work, just as they would not have begun to penetrate the rest of his prose.

In a contest between the two, I would say they would have far more luck with Homer despite the antiquity of his language than they ever would with Joyce, whose words have been described by more than one critic as “gobbledegook.”

264

Thanks for bringing up that point again (about Sherman’s follow-up song using the same ‘inappropriate material served up to innocent campers’ joke used in the first song), Alan Smithee and Biffy the Elephant Shrew. I do think that the Lenny Bruce reference in the second song parallels the James Joyce reference in the first fairly closely–while it parallels Homer not at all.

But logic doesn’t seem to be very effective in this particular exchange (the thread as a whole, I mean). I’m now at the point of hoping that what we’re witnessing here is performance art.

265

I have made many specific arguments, as have others.

  1. I’ve discussed Allan Sherman’s background and parallels to Leo Bloom (from Joyce).
  2. I’ve discussed the structure of the song itself and how each set of four lines ramps up to a more absurd statement, which fits with Joyce’s book being the more extreme explanation.
  3. I have linked to audio recording from the era that showed that the specific line got a big laugh, indicating its humor.
  4. I have linked to scholarly work from Cambridge University on Joyce’s Ulysses that references this song as an example of the work’s impact on pop culture.
  5. Others have pointed out how Sherman himself references Joyce as the “James Joyce Players.”
  6. Others have pointed out that melody the song is set to is mentioned in Joyce’s Ulysses.
  7. Culturally it was a book being discussed and re-discovered at the time.
  8. It’s a funny line so it fits the theme of absurdist humor in the song, and it meant to be a satirical, over the top song.
  9. Exposing kids to sex is a long honored tradition of “making men from boys”, so it’s internally consistent with the meaning of the couplet.
  10. It’s a subtle enough line to not be overtly graphic, so it fits a pop song, but it also
    can be funny at a more adult level for the people who get the joke.

If you count all these facts as handwaving, color me confused.

266

I feel like I have to repeat the point that while I disagree with dchord, the court opinion rested on the notion that Ulysses couldn’t be obscene if it didn’t promote lust, and instead of served a literary purpose. That may be true, but it’s a huge mistake to say there’s nothing “dirty” in Ulysses. It has public masturbation, eschatological sex fantasy, ruminations on post orgasmic feelings, and rape fantasy, among other things.

267

So … Lola: Man or woman?

268

This has been addressed repeatedly with regards to the angle of exposing the kids to sexual ideas, although an alternate possibility (admittedly less likely) is that the coach is intellectually toughening up his charges by exposing them to challenging literature. *Ulysses *is equally as notorious for its difficulty as it is for its shocking passages. In any event, insisting on proving that the coach’s tactic would actually work as prophylaxis against sissyhood is going above and beyond overthinking the joke. How is reading from Homer actually going to make the kids any less “weak” and “non-athletic” (your own definition of what “sissy” would mean to young Allan from post 28)?

Because it isn’t pornographic. It had been *legally decreed *non-pornographic. Yes, of course it’s inappropriate for 8-10 year olds, which is the whole point of the line. It is popularly characterized as a “dirty book.” So is Catcher in the Rye, which is still considered problematic in the 21st century. But both were on the library shelves at school when I was 14, which is when I first encountered them. We’re not talking Penthouse here.

Do you really not see the difference between *alluding *to something that has “dirty” content and actually *having *“dirty” content, as was believed of “Louie, Louie”? Besides, look how effective the ban on *that *was! Sure didn’t stop me from hearing it plenty of times as a kid.

The answer to the last two addresses this as well.

269

While this is probably correct for Ulysses, I meant ‘scatological’.

270

I was wondering about that.

271

BTW, with regard to what was appropriate for kids in those days, I was watching the MST3K DVD with the shorts the other night. One of them was about a four or five year old kid who walked away from his parents at a fair in Canada and ran into the visiting stars. No one, until the very end, bothered to be alarmed. You can imagine what the reaction to this today would have been. I’m not sure when this was made exactly, I think early 1950s.

272

My position on this point is entirely consistent. I contend that neither incident (reading from Ulysses or Lenny Bruce appearing at a children’s camp) would have ever happened in real life.

The Joyce and Bruce incidents are distinguished by the fact that the coach’s reading has already happened, as described by the writer of the letter. I agree that the reading happened, but it happened with Homer, not Joyce.

The Bruce story has the advantage that it will never have to happen, because it’s in the future. Sherman was asked by the record label, as all record labels will ask of those who have a hit record out of the blue, to come up with another hit record. In their myopia, record executives ask the hitmaker to come up with a song “like your first one,” figuring that lightning will strike twice. They ignore the fact that this very rarely happens…that follow-ups that sound “just like” the recent hit nearly always fail.

This was indeed the case with Sherman’s follow-up, which reached only #59, meaning that for all practical purposes it received little if any airplay. (I listened to AM radio constantly in 1964, and I never once heard it.)

Sherman, tasked with following up “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” with something “just like the first one” (right down to the same musical accompaniment), figures that he has to up the ante in some way, lest he finds himself completely repeating himself. So he comes up with the fanciful scenario of Lenny Bruce appearing at a youth summer camp…but places it in the future, thus getting around the problem of the young letter writer having to describe this event as something that has actually taken place. Had he approached this in the way the coach’s reading was described, he would have faced the same problem the Joyce interpretation presents in the original hit.

It’s a complete flight of fantasy, which contrasts with the events in “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” which I’ve shown numerous times don’t have to be fantasy at all, but can all be interpreted as real-world events — enhanced at times by the child’s overactive imagination, but still real.

A coach reading to young children from Homer qualifies as a real-world event. A coach reading to young children from Joyce does not — thus leading to my “one of these things is not like the others” refrain.

273

DChord, are you looking for some old person who was a teenager when the song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” came out to tell you they thought it was about sex? Okay.

We didn’t think, we KNEW it was about sex. I can assure you that whole bunches of teenage girls knew this. It’s there in the text and the subtext.

I can’t believe this thread has gone three pages with a discussion of whether Allen Sherman meant Ulysses the book by James Joyce. OF COURSE he did. It was a once-banned book. I think in 1963 it might still have been banned in Boston. It was a joke, in a joke song, where it was likened to getting poison ivy and ptomaine poisoning. (I did not know, at the time, and had to ask an adult, “What’s bad about Ulysses?” Was told it was a book not appropriate for children. One of those books packed in really really tight in between The Naked and the Dead and Forever Amber. I had to ask what ptomaine poisoning was, too, for the record.)

274

I have NOT “ignored” this answer. As a review of my posts will show, I have disagreed with it quite pointedly, and stated my belief that the child is not making up any event in his letter. I have noted repeatedly that the alligators and bears stories are the product of his overactive imagination fueled by older campers’ taunts. And I’ve pointed out that no sane parent would take this or the ptomaine poisoning story seriously. They would see all of them for what they were.

The idea of reading from Joyce is completely out of line with any other item mentioned in “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.” The “ignoring” is being done by those who blow right past this inconvenient fact. Make the reading from Homer, and this problem goes away.

This seems as good a time as any for an update on my survey. I received a late reply from one of my friends earlier tonight. He too falls into the “It’s Homer” camp, as well as the “he’s not lying” camp. Here’s his exact quote:

“The coach wanted to read to the campers about tough warriors like Ulysses (if I remember any Greek mythology) as role models so they wouldn’t be sissies since he couldn’t toughen them up outside because it was raining (remember that line?) Also I think the singer was exaggerating rather than lying.”

So the total in my survey is now 9-4 in favor of Homer, and 13-0 in favor of describing actual events rather than lying.

Just thought a little “real-world” input might be useful in these lofty surroundings!
The line could just as easily read:

Answered in a subsequent post.

You’re again making my case for me. Thank you. Of course the idea of malaria in the US in 1963 is ludicrous. I pointed this out myself. But it’s not at all beyond reason that a child could believe such a story whispered about by older campers after his bunkmate falls ill. Just like alligators and bears.

By the way, there is absolutely no mention of kidnapping in the song.

You’re welcome to your theory that the child “makes up” everything he writes about. But I don’t support it, and the need for this theory is obviated by my interpretation of the song — which once again, is consistent in a way that other theories are not.

I’m fine, thanks. If you’re allowed to believe that nothing I’ve said “rebuts” your arguments, then I’m entitled to exactly the same privilege.

275

Oh, there were probably parents, in 1963, who told their kids that sure, he was talking about the epic poem.

But let’s face it, here is an entire song about a kid who is exaggerating things to get his parents to bring him home from camp. So, X-rated book versus epic poem, which one do you think will get him sent home?

At least that stupid song made more sense than its b-side, which, as I’m pretty sure you don’t know, was a tune called “Rat Fink.” He spelled Rat Fink, letter by letter, wrong. “R-A-T-T F-I-N-K, Rat Fink.” It was to a tune of the song called Rag Mop, which was the same song with even more misspellings: “R-A-G-G M-O-P-P, Rag Mop.” It is a mystery.

(My apologies for quoting so much of the aforementioned b-side. Not a big quote, but pretty much the entirety of the song.)

Oh and PS as long as we’re being entirely literal here, there were not usually “head coaches” at camp. There were counselors and there were CITs, who would tell you about how last session some kid sneaked out of his cabin after lights out and got bit by a copperhead. Every session they said this.)

276

And there you go,* making my case for me*: the follow-up song is consciously, closely modeled after the original with minor twists, and the Lenny Bruce joke is there as an intentional echo of the Joyce joke in the original. If the line in HMHF were a reference to Homer, the Lenny Bruce gag would be from out of left field, with no connection to the original.

And with all your hand-waving, special pleading, and “all my friends say I’m right” claims, you can’t get away from the plain and simple fact that the Odyssey is not, and never was, “something called Ulysses.”

277

New verse:

You may think I’m
Playing more tricks
But this place has
Agkistrodon contortrix!

278

I just did a survey of ~25 people at work. They ranged from 17 to “Old” (she wouldn’t answer, but said she was a teen when the song came out). I played them “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. I then asked them " What is the girl doing with the guy “tonight” if she’s worried if he’ll “still love her tomorrow”?" 100% said sex of some sort. 100% of them said that the girl was worried if the boy would respect her in the morning after they had sex. There were no exceptions, no caveats, no weasel wording–every single one said that there’s no possible interpretation that makes sense. If they were just kissing or something innocent, she wouldn’t be worried if he’d respect her the next day. The older woman started giggling and asked why I was asking–she said that when she was a teen “everyone” knew that the girl was worried that if she “put out”, he might not respect her afterwards and wanted to know why I was asking “such a silly question”.

Odd factoid. The older people (~50+) liked the song. The younger people (24-18 or so) liked the song. The 25-50 year old people were generally the ones who didn’t like the song as much. You’d think there’d be a descending line-- like this \ going from oldest liking the song to youngest hating it, but it was more like / with the bottom of the curve being the people who were in their teens in the '80s and early '90s.

Note: Sex isn’t necessarily intercourse. Hand jobs, “heavy petting”, oral, etc all count as “sex”

279

Yeah, any attempt at this point to argue that Allan Sherman was somehow ignorant of James Joyce or not intending the reference is absolutely disingenuous.

280

Note that the Jimmy Joyce Singers were real. However, I have found no place else where they were ever credited as the *James *Joyce Singers.