he reads to us from something called 'Ulysses'.

Cafe Society
281

And whole bunches of younger teen and pre-teenage girls — also very much the audience for this song — did NOT “know this.”

That was my point. Like most any song, it can be open to more than one interpretation, and the age and experience level of any given listener will influence his or her interpretation.

If “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” had been absolutely an unequivocally about the protagonists having sex, there is no way it ever would have permitted on the airwaves.

As it was, the standard “romantic love” interpretation — the same interpretation given to virtually ALL pop music singles released in 1960 —was also a perfectly legitimate one.

If you want to get specific, consider the lines:

“You give your love so sweetly,” not “You fucked my eyeballs out.”

“Can I believe the magic of your sighs,” not “Can I believe the magic of your pants and moans.”

“You tell me I’m the only one,” not “You tell me ‘Wow, baby, you really got me off.’”

Of course I’m being a little silly here, but the point is that all lines in this song can be interpreted as “I gave my heart (not my vagina) to you last night…are you gonna be true to me, or betray me for another?” And by a significant portion of listeners to the song (and most importantly, radio programmers), that’s how they were interpreted.

I think a lot of posters in this thread are younger, and have no concept of how completely taboo the subject of sex was in popular culture (and most certainly, popular culture aimed at young people) through at least the first half of the 1960s. Rob and Laura, certainly as young and sexy a married couple as you could find on TV, slept in twin beds, for cryin’ out loud! And even the concept of showing their bedroom at all was considered revolutionary at the time.
This may seem a diversion from the thread topic, but in fact, it relates to it. A group of 8- to 10-year-old boys in 1963 would not be less “sissified” by reading to them alleged “sexy” passages from Joyce’s Ulysses. These children would be baffled, and have no frame of reference for understanding what the hell was being talked about.

Yeah, yeah, I know…“it’s just a joke, don’t worry about it.” But just as with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” an alternate interpretation of the line was available that was completely innocent of any sexual connotations — and also “worked” with the flow of the narrative perfectly logically.

I strongly believe (and my modest research efforts seem to confirm) that this innocent interpretation was the one chosen by the greater number of listeners to “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” — as well as the radio programmers of the day.

282

On this point I don’t disagree much. The reference was probably picked up by the usual listeners to Sherman’s music, and there weren’t many of those until this song came out. But even if most of the people who heard the song didn’t get the reference to Joyce, that doesn’t mean they also assumed it was a reference to the Odyssey. I think the plurality of listeners didn’t ascribe any particular meaning and laughed at the word ‘sissies’, and the rhyme with Ulysses that they didn’t understand.

But that is an entirely different question than what was asked. The evidence in this thread is overwhelming that Sherman intended the reference to be to the James Joyce book.

283

Your “older woman” was making the same mistake the poster I just replied to has made. “Because everyone in my small circle of friends who are my age believed this way, everyone in the world believed this way.”

Your survey would have produced quite different results if it had been conducted in 1960 and asked across a wide range of age groups who were listeners to the song at the time.

I’ll repeat: if “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” had been perceived in 1960 to unequivocally be about the protagonists having sex, there would have been howls of protest. What we have instead are scattered references to it being “banned by several radio stations” — as usual without any specifics. As it was, the song was #1 on the Billboard charts for two weeks. A song did not achieve that chart placement if its airplay was severely restricted.

Interestingly, it was not banned by the BBC, which as this page shows, was extremely “fussy” about songs with far less dangerous interpretations.

Just doing a quick check finds this memory from someone who was a 14-year-old boy at the time of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”'s success.

The responses from your co-workers who were unfamiliar with the song until you played it to them are worthless, because it is impossible for them to listen to it with anything other than 2014 ears.

284

The “connection to the original” is strictly in the melody and the setting.

But have you actually read all the lyrics to the follow-up song? I think not. If you did, you would realize that the follow-up is nothing but a bunch of unconnected one-liners, some of them frankly not very funny.

The camper is not building a case for coming home from Camp Granda this time. Indeed, the refrain is “Let me stay” — which is rather curious considering the letter-writer speaks of such things as his compound fractures, his bunk being “where the skunk is,” and “little black things in the food.”

In fact, ALL of the lines in the follow-up song are “out of left field.” There is no effort on the part of the letter writer to build a case for anything. The Lenny Bruce line, like all the rest of the lyrics, is there for a quick, cheap laugh, not as part of any coherent narrative. This was not the case in the original hit.

I have addressed this in previous posts, but obviously you weren’t paying attention, so I’ll try again.

The head coach is in the front of the room in front of a fairly large gathering of campers. He has a book in his hand. Like many books of its day, it has a plain cover with no illustration on it, no title in big bold letters. He begins reading from the book without announcing its title. (Or if for some reason he does announce it, he says it only once.)

The book is a translation of The Odyssey in which the protagonist is called “Ulysses” (of which, it has been shown by posters here, there are many). In the course of the reading, the hero’s name is mentioned multiple times.

When recounting this event, what will the young camper believe he is being read to from?

I find it amusing that you’re willing to blow past so many other inconsistencies in the story, yet when it comes to this, you suddenly insist on strict literalism.

285

:rolleyes: That’s not very nice to say, as the poster you’re replying to was explaining why your explanations of it were not right. The poster didn’t miss your explanation or wasn’t “paying attention” but explaining it in a different way.

How could you possible know this?

In my mind he was in the kids bunk (in my camp area specialists, like coaches, art director etc were assigned to bunks with the kids, along with their normal counselors) and says to the kids “I am going to read to from a great book called Ulysses. This’ll turn you sissies into real men.”

Anyway, you’re making the same mistake again and again. Arguing each point independently, rather looking at the whole picture and making the most logical case for what Sherman intended with his line.

286

I think this greatly underestimates the masses’ familiarity with Ulysses. Most with a normal high school or college education would have known the name and made some association with epic poetry and heroic deeds, even if they had only read a small excerpt from Homer’s works in their high school literature book. In addition, a major motion picture was made in 1954 entitled Ulysses that starred Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn.

I understand that we’re dealing with two questions here. The first is what Sherman intended. In the absence of hard evidence (e.g., a quote from him), we can only guess. My position has been that there are arguments against the Joyce interpretation as well as arguments for it.

I’ve identified a corollary question I feel is important: how was the line perceived by listeners to the song? This may, in the end, prove to be a more important question, as it ties into the issues I’ve raised about the strictures put on Top 40 hits and the general absence of overt sexual references in the popular culture of the day — an even more important issue if the subject of children is involved.

In order for “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” to be a Top 40 hit played on AM radio, the non-Joyce interpretation HAD to be available…to both the listener and the radio programmers.

You have provisionally agreed that it’s possible that “most of the people who heard the song didn’t get the reference to Joyce.” I believe this is a certainty.

And back to Sherman’s original intent: I’ve also agreed that it’s possible, as one poster suggested long ago, that Sherman had BOTH interpretations in mind when he wrote the song, and he realized that the Ulysses line is one of those things that “could be taken two ways.” Like every other theory, however, this can only be a guess right now.

All along, what I’ve been saying is that the Joyce interpretation is not the slam-dunk that most everyone seems to think it is…and also that the Homer interpretation works perfectly well within the context of the song.

Nothing anyone has said here has caused me to doubt this position.

287

Nothing can cause you to doubt the position. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

288

Very true, it’s not. But if the Head Coach read to Little Allan about Ulysses from the Odyssey, and if Little Allan had heard the parents and friends whispering about a scandalous book called Ulysses- which no one should read and must be kept out of the hands of Little Allan, I can see exactly why he’d say “something called Ulysses.”.

289

But why go through those machinations, when you can take the statement at face value and it works (on every level)?

There actually is “something called Ulysses”
It would be the kind of book that would be read to “make a man out of you”
It would be an inappropriate thing for someone to read a child at camp
It’s so ridiculous a thing to read to kids that it’s funny and the song is 100% meant to humorous.

(And it’s not Little Allan, it’s based on Allan’s son’s letters.)

290

Actually, no- have you read it?

Too inappropriate.

Yes, I know, we’re just using that name.

291

You must have attended a tonier summer camp than I did!

In my camp, there were ten or so tents in each village, each with seven campers and a counselor. There were two other “villages” besides my own with similar numbers. I don’t recall ever receiving a visit in my tent from any other camp personnel other than our tent counselor, who was there with us in one of the four bunk beds each night.

So 7 x 10 x 3 = 210 campers. Any interaction with other camp personnel would have come in a large building with many campers present. The fact that the song speaks of “the waiters” indicates a large mess hall with the entire population of the camp present. That was my camp experience too.

292

You mean the book is too inappropriate? That’s why it’s a joke!!! The whole idea of not having any sissies and the coach needing to fix is inappropriate! It’s equivalent to saying he read to them from Penthouse or Hustler.

Of course it’s it inappropriate. So is losing children and serving up ptomaine poisoning. It’s describing a camp where the kids are not being cared for appropriately!

293

Uh, no, not a tony camp.

We slept in platform tents, 6 girls to a group with a counselor in her tent she shared with another counselor. But the area directors were assigned to different groups so they would connect with the kids. For example, the (very weird and hippy-dippy) head of the nature center would eat meals with us and hang out with our counselors during rest time or rainy days for a couple weeks, then switch to a new group. Sometimes we’d get an area head, sometime we wouldn’t. Sure, we ate in a large mess hall and sang camp songs after meals etc. The waiters were just the folks to delivered the family-style meals to each table, to keep from having a million kids running around getting food. After meals we’d often have rest time back at our tent site.

294

Yes, which is why DChord568 and mine reading is funnier. The Head Coach read The Odyssey. Little Allan was bored to tears. He remembers adult scandalized whispers about “something called Ulysses”, conflate the two, and writes a letter about something totally innocent that will shock his parents.

And, any sort of food poisoning or just harfing after eating too much strange poorly cooked food was called ptomaine poisoning even if it wasnt that serious. Or at least when I was a kid. It’s easy to imagine Little Allen watching some kid with a queasy stomach and reporting it as ptomaine poisoning.

295

Well, we’ll have to disagree about that, but as we all know, humor is subjective, as is it’s appropriateness.

I think it really being Homer and it being misunderstood requires so many layers of interpretation that by the time you got the joke, the song’s moved on. There is no reason to think that Allan Sherman meant it any way other than what he actually wrote. The fact that some might find it a bit scandalous that imaginary children were being read a dirty book in someone’s imagination probably added to the appeal of the song.

296

Actually I was, as I already refuted this point in a post that you petulantly announced your intention to ignore. Here it is again:

It’s as if the songwriter had wanted to allude to the Aeneid, but the kid’s attention wanders after the first few words, so he reports “The coach read us something called Arms and the Man.” Then we’d be having this argument about Virgil vs. Shaw. Even if it makes sense for a *kid *to somehow confuse the titles *Odyssey *and Ulysses, it makes absolutely no sense for *Sherman *to refer to one work of literature by the title of another and expect the audience to guess that he was doing so.

297

But you’re interpreting it from a 2014 perspective of pedophilia and child abuse. That perspective simply didn’t exist in 1963 middle-class America. Coaches didn’t molest campers, teachers didn’t molest students, scout leaders didn’t molest scouts, and priests didn’t molest altar boys. Everyone simply knew that perverts hung out at the bus station, or maybe a public restroom, and they could be identified by their beard stubble, smell of cheap wine, and ratty overcoats.

And because there simply was no concept of middle-class sexual abuse of children, the idea that the coach would read from a dirty book would not be perceived as creepy, but simply absurd.

Just like the alligators, the malaria, the search parties, etc. Completely made up and ridiculous. Coach wants to make a man out of the kids, so he reads them a dirty book? What parent would ever take that seriously! You might as well tell them JFK is cheating on that beautiful wife of his.

298

Sez you. I asked my folks who were around at the time, and there was a wide, wide range within those 25 people…most in their 40s-late 50s.

But the data doesn’t match your preconcieved prejudices so you simply handwave it away.

Sez you.

You have the most bizarre view of music. Would you like me to dig up a bunch of Cole Porter songs from the '30s and '40s with outright sex and drugs lyrics that scored high on Billboard? Music has never been the virginally pure thing you imagine it to be.

Or do you want to try to handwave:

“When Grandmama (who’s age is 80)
In nightclubs is getting mate-y
with gigolos…
Anything goes”

as being about anything other than grandmama hiring gigolos to get “mate-y” with?

or
“Some get a kick from cocaine
But I knew that if
I took even one sniff
It would bore me terriffically too.
'Cause I get a belt out of you”

or
“Birds do it
Bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let’s do it”

etc.

All circa 1940, and all re-recorded and hits by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald etc in the '50s and played on the radio in both eras nary the blink of an eye.

299

I’ve provided just as much, if not more reasoning for my position as those who espouse the Joyce theory have. You may disagree with my reasoning, but you can’t say it doesn’t exist.

A more accurate statement would be that you can reason someone out of a position they’ve decided up front is the only possible position that can be taken. This description fits only one camp here.

300

Heck go back to the 19-aughts: “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife–But Oh, You Kid!” all about infidelity.

Anyone who thinks pop music was some sort of virginal playground in the middle of the 20th century wasn’t paying attention.

Here’s an interesting article on “But Oh, You Kid!”