Sex in Early American Music

7/2011 Vautier

There is a misconception about that period of time called the “gay nineties,” an apparently joyous, light-hearted interlude from 1890 until 1910.  In our minds’ eyes we see images of Victorian reserve and emotional restraint, young ladies strolling in the sunlit park with parasols in hand accompanied by handsome well-behaved beaus, properly attired in well-groomed mustache and boater hat.  In the cool evenings, moonbeams and soft starlight flicker through the trees amid canoe rides and tender kisses.  The scent of fresh roses arise in the air, all the while brass bands and roving quartets create sweet harmonies and rapturous melodies:

I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
Borne like a vapor on the summer air.[3]

These aesthetic images give us a distorted picture.  We like to think that there was a lot of flowery romance in the air, and it well may have been so.  But the thing we know for sure is a lot of sex was definitely going onRecords show us that this period had a significantly higher unmarried birthrate then any time before or since.

... one suggestive piece of evidence is the change in the rate of premarital pregnancies.  Having fallen to a low of ten-percent in the mid-nineteenth century, the rate rose significantly to twenty-three percent in the decades from 1880 to 1910.[4]

This means simply lots of sex.  Until 1950, the ratio between the frequency of premarital sexual activity and the number of illegitimate offspring had not changed very much.  At that point, effective birth control--the pill--took over the task of regulating baby production, affecting the long-standing statistical relationship between premarital sexual activity and illegitimate births.  Using this ratio, we can be pretty certain that more sex and free love occurred around the turn of the twentieth century than at any other period before 1950.

So why are the 1890’s looked upon as an era of sexual restraint?  Probably because that's what the upper class wanted everybody to believe.  The upper class, where most of the wealth was concentrated, controlled newspapers, railroads, steel production, coal mining, and most industries.  This group of people had it in their interest that America was to be viewed as following a path of moral righteousness.  Regardless of the facts, that’s the way they wanted it to be, so that's the way it was going to look in newspapers and history books! 

Just about everything that was advertised to a fast-emerging middle class from above demanded sexual restraint. This included dress, manners, public comportment, social habits, boy-girl relationships, and the use of chaperones.  Ladies could not expose even their ankles for fear of stirring passions and arousing carnal urges of young men.  The words “leg,” “breast,” “belly,” “woman,” and other anatomically suggestive words were banished from polite conversation.  Other more “suitable” words were used, such as lady or girl.  Chicken had white meat instead of breast meat, dark meat instead of legs.[5]  In short, any word that hinted of a body part was not spoken in public nor in the presence of the impressionable, naïve, and easily beguiled “tender sex.”  Such breaches of propriety were considered rude, crass, boorish, and unacceptable.  This was the specific intent of the upper class and clergy, from which we get our current and perhaps incorrect view of these times.

The majority of popular music written before 1892 did not seem to hint at the idea of physical sex or even physical contact because sex at that earlier time was not a publishable commodity.  It was instead a non-entity in the Victorian court of impeccably pure standards and unimpeachable moral correctness.  This included such topics as kissing, caressing, hugging, petting, or anything whatever to do with physical contact.  The “I” word (it) was a marginally acceptable substitute for the word sex, and even it had to be handled carefully.[6]  In biblical lore, Jehovah was a substitute for Yahweh because God’s name was much too holy to be spoken in common.  Anyone who dared utter the holy name of God stood the risk of being immediately struck dead by a thunderbolt from on high.  A similar dreadful fate was sure to await anyone so bold as to utter that most sacred of words, sex, in public or in mixed company.

Up until 1892 general song topics included lost or dead kids, drinking, sailing, mocking birds, sunsets, fights between big Irishmen, growing old, mothers, marching off to war, religious emotion, and a hundred other things, but no really interesting sex, romance, or love.  If the theme was one of love, it was handled very carefully.  All suggestive or ambiguous words were avoided.

Therefore the musical period before 1892 is quite remarkable for its lack of sexual remarkability.  No mention of tender loves, spicy escapades, illicit romances, elopements, “fallen ladies,” or “wilted flowers.”  Nor were there discussions of rowing up the river with a girl, hugging in movie houses, kissing under the moon, caressing in the park, loving, spooning, or romancing.  Nothing more than blithe birds and sweet butterflies appeared in song lyrics.  Indeed a menagerie of other topics were around but there was no sex.  “Sweetheart” was about as close as one dared come to the forbidden topic.  Below is an example of one really red-hot love song from this period before 1892:

I’ll take you home again Cathleen,
Across the ocean wild and wide.
To where your heart has never been,
Since first you were my bonnie bride.[7]

No sweetie-pie, ladylove, girlie, honey-bunch, gal, hootchy-kootchy, tootsie-wootsie, turtledove, honey-bunny or ragtime gal.  Not even so much as a soft, little, innocent sweetheart.  But by 1892 the music kettle was at a rolling boil.  Love and sex were just bubbling to get out, and it all seems to have started in vaudeville.

Vaudeville 

Vaudeville was a type of non-stop, low-humor variety-stage entertainment featuring songs, dances, burlesques, skits, monologues, jugglers, acrobats, animal acts, singers, strong men, magicians, chorus girls, and slapstick.  You name it, vaudeville did it.  The format was open in structure and usually consisted of nine acts per show, each show lasting a little more than about two hours.

Common wisdom has it that Vaudeville began around 1880 as a response to other forms of entertainment, or perhaps because a lot of the bars, saloons, and brothels were losing clientele to local theaters.  This explanation does not really make sense  since those places always had plenty of business if they were well run; and besides, the theaters did not serve whisky, beer, and other amenities, so they weren’t actually competing for the same clientele.  True, there was competition, but only between the individual bars and saloons.

It is probably more accurate to say that Vaudeville was simply an outgrowth of the brothels.  In 1880 a brothel was not exclusively a site for sexual activity but a place of general entertainment, .  The patrons enjoyed beer, alcohol, burlesque, skits, dancing, and of course, available women.  Vaudeville sprang out of this arrangement most likely because it was free of the usual forms of censorship.  The morally upright and socially conscious upper-class and clergy had for many years been dictating and administering morality through their powerful influence over law enforcement, religion, politics, and the press.  However, because Vaudeville was hiding behind the kind of low-end social shield that allowed such activities to develop independent of mainstream life, it was able to fill the obvious vacuum that Victorian morality had created.  Owners of the saloons and brothels had an understanding with authorities that performances of questionable character were to be permitted and even expected, but only within certain limits (e.g. girls had to wear tights, no physical contact with customers).  Therefore, unimpeded by the social control and moral strictures that late nineteenth-century society imposed on general entertainment, vaudeville developed a much richer and more original type of artistic expression.

Tony Pastor     
         

Vaudeville gradually broke away from the bars and brothels, moving into its own theaters and forming business affiliations.  Several large syndicates were developed that owned and operated vaudeville theaters in many cities.  These theaters rotated their performances from one city to another, and the whole arrangement soon became a very profitable enterprise.  Many good Hollywood performers matured by developing their talents precisely in this environment.

Vaudeville thrived on sexual innuendo, double meanings, and even clearly sexual music, a type of behavior sure to constantly attracted big crowds.  The theaters of Tony Pastor and Koster and Bials usually played to packed houses while openly flaunting their full-figured and buxom chorus girls, exhibiting every bit of bad taste and roguery that society then would allow.  They even occasionally attempted strip shows in which the girls, of course, could strip no further than to their flesh-colored tights.  It was a bold time and all of it great fun for the teaming crowds.  Occasionally such depravity did bring in the law--at prearranged times, of course, and primarily to pay feigned homage to the ever-vigilant moral reactionaries.  The raids also were good for business because they provided free, sometimes front-page advertising.

Erotic songs abounded in vaudeville.  It was a main breeding ground for the objectionable, the tantalizing, the suggestive, and always the slightly obscene.  It was a test site for racy material, new and old alike.  It pushed the limits of decency.  If you could get away with it in vaudeville, you may be able to do it on Broadway.  If you could do it on Broadway, you may be able to publish it as popular sheet music.  Such was the progression.  Broadway looked to vaudeville as a moral temperature gauge, and so did the music publishing houses in general.  Good songs done on the vaudeville circuit could be watered down a bit.  Then these songs could perhaps be worked into a Broadway musical and, even more often, sold to one of the many interested publishing houses for release to the general public.

Other vaudeville songs, such as Pump Away Joseph, were just too far beyond the pale to make it anywhere out of the Tenderloin or the Bowery.  This song’s obvious reference to sex had the audiences rolling in the aisles, and many young women hiding their embarrassment behind fans and shawls.

Pump away Joseph, do;
Pump away Joseph, do.
Be ready and willing, the kettle be filling,
While I make tea for two.
Get there Joseph, do.
Some day I’ll pump for you.
Don’t stay there and dandle,
But collar the handle,
And pump away, Joseph, do.[8]

The public, usually young people, loved these songs, and continued to fill the vaudeville houses in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and other cities on the vaudeville circuit.  The suggestive lyrics, the scanty costumes, the burlesque dances, and the general air of seediness were all part of the show.

Many fine female singers made their living and earned their fame on the vaudeville stage.  These included the irresistible Lillian Russell, the magnetic Nora Bayes, the innocent Maude Nugent, the mesmerizing Blanche Ring, the sexy Eva Tanguay, and the evocative Anna Held.  The four famous female baritones,[9] Lottie Gilson, Imogene Comer, Maggie Cline and Helene Mora popularized songs with their over-done, suggestive, and raspy singing styles.  Then, too were the “coon shouters” like May Irwin [52], whose exaggerated style of delivery was not a whole lot different from modern rap.  It was through the efforts of these singers that vaudeville became a powerful source of this more physical and expressive type of music that would eventually have a decided influence on the mainstream.

When popular music burgeoned in 1892 and afterwards, much of the vaudeville material automatically began to move in that direction.  Tin Pan Alley enthusiastically promoted these hot songs, much to the chagrin and displeasure of social lions.  The respectable upper class felt that these songwriters had a moral obligation to resist the lure of profits by restraining from offering material of morally questionable content.  After all these songwriters had no business spreading the evil and turpitude of vaudeville beyond those clearly designated locations for such sin and degradation.  If there had to be evil in the world then let it remain restricted to where the pillars of society wanted it to be confined.  After all these people felt they were the administrators of morality.

In addition the new songs started popularizing the more undesirable and offensive slang that was usually only heard on the lusty stages of vaudeville and in the scruffier parts of town reserved for these theaters and places of ill fortune and depravity.  The songs brought into frequent use such casual and sexually degrading words as gal, ragtime gal, sweetie pie, tender love, ladylove, doll, corker, girly, babe, baby, fast girl, warm girl, hootchy-kootchy, and a host of other new phrases.  It became so bad that even teenagers began communicating in these ways.  We can well imagine the shame and embarrassment of parents when they overheard their own children using words like baby, sweetie pie, and even worse, warm girl, hootchy-kootchy, or corker.

Vaudeville offered to many a first glance at the beauty of sex.  There were young ladies in circus costumes who performed acrobatic tricks on stage, while others, on tightropes and high wires, stripped to flesh-colored tights to the sound of bump and grind music.  Still others cavorted around on stage, wearing the flimsiest of attire, belting out suggestive, outrageous, and in every way unladylike songs.  All this took place in front of wide-eyed, open-mouthed, impressionable young people.  Scandalous!  Absolutely scandalous!  And what’s more, the boisterous performances of those female baritones and “coon shouters” absolutely intoxicated audiences.  They employed highly suggestive styles and mannerisms, spicy monologues between song verses, and foxy, coquettish, and shameful on-stage antics.  Indeed their behavior was anything but proper or befitting of the “fair sex.”

Lottie Gilson     

Here is an example of one of these spoken monologues, done by Lottie Gilson between the verses of You Don’t Have to Marry the Girl.  The orchestra becomes quiet while floodlights train in on a diminutive five-foot-two-inch figure at center stage.  Wearing a bright-colored, loose, plunging camisole and a short, flouncy dress with tights and sporting an immense ostrich-plumed hat, she speaks:

… In two minutes she’ll be calling you Algie again, the same as ever with a look in her eyes that says, “Kiss me just once and save my life!” So you kiss her.  Then you kiss her again.  And the more you do it the better she likes it, and the better you like her.[10]

The vaudeville machinery continued to yield up a good number of songs for the mainstream, that is of course, after cleaning them up for general consumption.  But even after sanitizing the words, strong sexual themes remained.  This unique blend of low humor and sexuality offered a refreshing light in the darkness of these times.

In 1908 a righteousness began to overtake vaudeville.  It was losing its audience and had to draw people back mainly by improving upon its former shabbier image.  Suddenly, gone were the seedy acts, the ambiguous sexual innuendoes, the female baritones, and scantily clad girls.  Back came the monologues, jugglers, acrobats, slapstick, animal acts, strongmen, and magicians.  Vaudeville wanted to appeal to a larger segment of the public by casting off its older, darker image in order to qualify as clean, respectable family entertainment.  Some of this reform movement was no doubt due to the unremitting conservative backlash, the constant nagging of moralists and clergy, and renewed efforts by law enforcement and women’s groups, all demanding reform.  Mostly, however, it was just a way to bring back the crowds, because the audiences had begun to dwindle, siphoned away by the ever-increasing forms of alternative entertainment like nickelodeons, arcades, amusement parks, and moving pictures.

All the same, it was a losing cause.  The audiences continued to diminish until, by 1930, most of vaudeville had moved to Hollywood.  Gone were the slapstick and comedy acts, the punching, slapping, and poking.  Gone too were the often obnoxious and boisterous crowds.  Also gone from the stage was the strong scent of greasepaint mixed with tobacco and many other smells.  No longer noticeable was the odor of girls sweating under the heat of powerful low lights or the stale but distinct gymnasium smell that seamed to constantly permeate the air, a telltale reminder of a thousand past performances past and future.  No longer heard was the saucy and vibrant music interwoven with suggestive dialogue and nonverbal queues.  Missing were the asides, the winks, gestures, hip movements and nods.  These had all gone west to the silver screen.

Nonetheless, the legacy of vaudeville remained.  It remained that valuable link between the fashionable and the risqué, the other side of the social coin, the other world, the demimonde.  It was a contrast between what was strictly proper and what was deliciously tainted, the rigidly acceptable and the slightly sleazy.  It was the pressure gauge, the relief valve.  It was that shadow moral government that allowed freedom of expression in a society that had become polarized in an era where even the word sex had been stricken from the lexicon.  People lived in a fairy-tale world where storks delivered babies, masturbation caused blindness, and menstruation was a punishment sent from heaven.  The “s” and “i” words (sex and it) were only talked about in whispers and innuendoes.  But through all this righteous smoke vaudeville had remained the only thing to remind us that life could be better and that it was still fun to be human.

The Revue

Ziegfield girl  

As vaudeville began to fade its sexual themes were replaced by the revue, which was essentially an updated form of the early extravaganza.  The revue had more girls, more songs, more pageantry, larger stages, bigger sets, and cheaper, flimsier music.  All this was spearheaded by the greatest of the original playboys, Florenz Ziegfield.

Florenz was the first of the great flesh peddlers.  Long before porno flicks and cyber chicks and long before Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccioni, and Larry Flint, Florenz Ziegfield made his mark and his fortune riding high on the substantial hips and proportionally substantial bosoms of beautiful young girls.  Flo set the definition for the large theatrical revue, featuring many scantily adorned young beauties in stage shows that were rich in pomp and poor in composition or real musical substance.  Still it sold to packed houses.  Florenz did not care about the quality of the music.  People wanted cheap sex shows in the exalted name of French class, although his revues had little French and less class.  Nevertheless America was ready for Flo’s shows after enduring years of starved psyches and undernourished libidos.  The Ziegfield Follies granted a respite, a refreshing plunge into the early 2000's sex exploitation, after a long period in the dry desert of sexual denial.

The revue was based on a tradition dating back probably to 1867 when The Black Crook first opened.  The Black Crook is more properly considered an extravaganza.  It was a progression of on-stage pageants featuring lots of chorus girls wearing few clothes, which was held together by an even more frivolous and contrived plot.  The music was highly forgettable.  Still, The Black Crook was definitely the first stage play to in any way resemble an American musical, despite its main intent to show off leggy, full-figured women in tights under the presumption of “wholesome and socially redeeming art.”  Obviously, the revue was not exactly new.  What was new, however, was the way Ziegfield was able to promote his product.

As a young boy, Flo rebelled against almost anything Victorian.  Born into a middle class Midwest family, he had been forced to accept traditional moral values.  He became determined to reject these same values outright, make his own way, and live his life free of the chains and limitations of a society which he felt had gotten way out of control.  So he did.

While on a business trip to London, he fell deeply in love with the beautiful and talented singer Anna Held.  They proceeded to live together in unmarried bliss for several years, which, although quite scandalous, only served to enhance Flo’s soaring reputation as a first-rate playboy.  He thrived on scandal.

By 1896 Anna Held hit upon fame in her own right with several songs.  Still, she is most noted for her fabulously slim waist and her reputation for requiring a daily milk bath, from which she supposedly derived her beauty, passion, and singing abilities.  Flo and Anna were finally married in 1896, and the marriage lasted for a stormy 15 years.  By the time they did eventually divorce, both of them had, as you might imagine, long-since abandoned any semblance of marital union and gone back to their freewheeling and spontaneous ways of love.

Ziegfield was able to succeed with his follies for several reasons.  First was his exquisite taste for beauty, or rather, what others perceived as beauty.  He could definitely pick the best, and his eye for this commodity was unmatched.

Actually, he was canny enough to take the old burlesque performers, with their sweaty bosoms, thick legs, sour breath, and general air of seediness, and wrap them in yards of gossamer.  A master of packaging, he maintained that his soft-core presentations were dedicated to “glorifying the American girl,” not exploiting her.  The hypocrisy worked, and the gimmick made his spectacular revues palatable to audiences, who gladly fell into step with his charade.[11]

Moreover, Ziegfield was able to pass off his performances as real art.  He presented big stage shows promoted as classy, highbrow acts imported from Paris, and he was able to convince most Americans that this was the case.  He reasoned that these shows would bring to our shores a measure of culture that, he contended, had been missing for too long.  He suggested that the artistic merit and style of his pageants would certainly overcome any possible suggestion of lewd conduct or excessive body exposure.  Besides, it was a perfectly decent show because all his girls wore tights (at first).

A third reason for the success of the Ziegfield Follies was that it was very good for the entertainment industry, a cyclic business that was often struggling to survive.  With the gradual but irrevocable death of vaudeville approaching, Ziegfield was the shining light.  He had, by 1915, become an important figure on the Great White Way,[12] and he was able to wield considerable influence.  There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of fresh young Midwest girls who would do anything to be in his show.  The Follies became synonymous with success, beauty, and stardom.  It did, in fact, produce a number of fine, talented actors and actresses who made the easy transition to Broadway or Hollywood.  Being a Follies’ Girl was similar to being a Playboy centerfold, and almost assuredly guaranteed a career in acting or singing.

Initially, the Follies were a scandal for the times.  Like Deep Throat, his shows were quietly talked about in hushed tones on back porches and in bar rooms, dance halls, barbershops, and smoking rooms throughout the country, wherever the conversation was all “man talk.”  The Follies were secretly whispered among friends, and, as would be expected, people eventually would steal away to catch the show just to see what all the fuss was about.

What the Follies did was no less than finally rid America of its post-Victorian hangover.  No other single force was stronger, or had more influence upon the emerging American appetite for uncensored entertainment than this raw, cheap, phony, artistically clumsy, nonsensical bit of sexual exploitation.  The Follies saw America well into the Roaring Twenties, with all that era’s bootleg whisky, loose and flippant living, speakeasies, flapper girls, and easily gained and lost fortunes.  It was one of the driving forces behind the movement to a freer and more open society, which would not fully arrive for another 60 years.  However, it was a start.  America was on the way out of the sexual doldrums, nicely led along by Ziegfield and his beautiful, sleazy, cheap, wonderful chorus girls.

Babe Connors

It is difficult to ignore the contributions made to popular music by the St. Louis entrepreneur and businesswoman known around town as Babe Connors, and her equally famous line of dancing girls.  Babe advertised these dancing girls as Creoles, but they were more likely octoroons[13] or some mixture thereof.  They danced in scanty outfits or in tights and always to a packed house.  The music was exciting and sexually suggestive.  In the 1890’s it was generally felt that you couldn’t really appreciate St. Louis unless you had been to Babe Connors’.[14]

Her girls were beautiful.  They were very young and very light, of the Negro mixture known as “pink skins.”  She usually kept eight or ten, and on less- occupied nights…would have the girls dance in the nude, perhaps reluctantly, for Babe was never all-out, preferring finesse, subtlety.  Her favorite variant was to attire her girls in long skirts but without underclothing.  Thus costumed, they would dance on a huge mirror.[15]

The most famous of all the singers at Babe’s was Mama Lou, a short, gnarled, black African-American with a powerful voice and a great command of American indigenous music.  Mama Lou first introduced Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay, probably from Paris or from the stage play. The Black Crook,  with it’s many lurid and salacious lyrics that have survived almost unchanged in the school yards, playgrounds, and back alleys of the country to this very day.  Every third grader chants the lyrics ad nauseam, with variation but more often, using some of the original verses:

Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay
Have you had yours today?
He laid me on the couch,
and baby’s on his way.

My mommy was surprised
To see my tummy rise,
Now baby’s on his way.
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay.

Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay.
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay.
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay.
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay.

Likewise, it was Mama Lou who first sang The Bully Song, (arbitrarily considered as the first ragtime song), whose authorship was later ascribed to Charles Trevathan.  Trevathan probably published what he heard while visiting Babe’s, that is after he had appropriately sanitized the lyrics.

A third song attributed to the redoubtable Mama Lou was Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, of Spanish American War fame, but this too can be argued.

In 1897, Mama Lou left the employment of Babe Connors to establish her own business.  She turned out to be a good employer and maintained a close relationship with her customers.  Her oftentimes outspoken and forward manner was the talk of the town.  She was extraordinarily kind to her girls, financially and with advice which she put into songs whose scarlet lines which were said to put any page to flames.  She was functional too.  An old timer recalls this instance:

One night two stalwarts came to her place [and] found it full of slender fops.  “Git out o‘ here, you skinny boys!” screamed Mama Lou.  “Here comes a couple o’ men wiv juice in ‘em.”[16]

History is cruel to Babe Connors and her talented performers, especially Mama Lou, because it offers none of them sufficient recognition in the landscape of American musical evolution.  Perhaps they were too far ahead of their time.  The 1890’s were still a time of sexual repression.  The adjudicators of righteousness still stood authoritative guard over the mysteries of the bedroom and the secrets of life.  Unfortunately the material that Babe promoted was too brash and too forward for general consumption.

Her legacy lives on, from the rollicking Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay, to the steady thump, thump of Hot Time, to the bold and brash Bully Song.  She lives on in our minds as perhaps the first bright light strong enough to shine forth during that early 1890’s period to illuminate the way for others.

Metaphor

A metaphor is the extension of the meaning of a word so it can apply to something else that has similar qualities.  In early music the word bedroom was strictly forbidden.  Metaphors were developed for the bedroom, such as heaven, paradise, Eden, happiness, loveland, and dreamland.  Dreamland was also a reference to the huge Coney Island amusement park by that name and was also used to indicate having a really great time.

One of the most common metaphors of the day was moon.  Its extensive use in song was not at all because it happened to rhyme with June, spoon, croon, or tune, but rather because it was a useful metaphor for sex.  The word itself is unavoidably close to honeymoon and spoon, the first of which describes sanctioned sex, and the second, illicit sexual gratification.  Moon also rhymes with June, traditionally a month of marriage, rebirth, joy, and also,  sex.

Those who belittle the music of this era often cite excessive use of the moon metaphor.  However, this author firmly believes that the talented writers of popular songs were well aware of the metaphorical potential of some words and tended to use these words over and over for that very purpose. Here are a few examples of the moon metaphor:

In modern music the use of metaphor is no longer required because sexual activity can be openly described, but even as recently as the 1960's it is used effectively in the songs Happiness is a Warm Gun and Muskrat Love, both of which abound in powerful sexual metaphor.  Yet these songs never had to resort to more obvious sexual language.  Such was the case with the moon metaphor.

Ambiguous Words – Intentional Confusion

Ambiguous words have more than one meaning.  Linguists use ambiguous words when intentional confusion is desired.  The richer a language is, the more shades of meaning it can give to ideas, and in a way, the more mileage it can be gotten out of words.  But there are reasons for ambiguity.

English is a very rich language, boasting a word count well in excess of three million,  Multiple meaning words exist in the hundreds of thousands.  This makes the English language incredibly good with fuzzy words, double meanings, puns, confusion, and indefinite destinations (which may explain why we have so many lawyers).  Shakespeare was absolute king of multiple-meaning words (puns), and his fine example of double-meaning has generated a precedent continued to this day.  A quick look at an English dictionary indicates that there are many multiple-meaning words.

Back then popular music thrived on ambiguous words, and the most common area for use was in the description of sexual activity.  The power of wordplay became the saving medicine of early popular music since about the only way the industry could circumvent strict Victorian standards was by the clever use of double-meaning words.

A sexual experience, because of its personal nature and perhaps because of the judgmental tendency of nonparticipants, cries out for euphemistic description.  A sexual encounter can be referred to in many ways.  For instance, couples made love, got together, fell, spooned, chose the easy path, gave in to passion, enjoyed themselves, went the limit, shot the moon, did the “hootchy-kootchy”, got some “nookie,” or went to the moon, to Dreamland, to paradise, to heaven, to Loveland, or to Eden.  Women, on the other hand, were laid, taken, made, had, done, deflowered, violated, tainted, or sullied; or they fell, fell from grace, fell by the roadside or wayside, became fallen angels or fallen ladies, lost their innocence, had a bad experience or an unsettling experience, became mature, gained experienced, or seen better days.

In a similar way, euphemisms abounded in the description of prostitutes.  They were called daughters of Eve, daughters of sin, fallen angels, fallen women, fallen souls, lost souls, bits of muslin, the muslin company[17], Jezebels, cyprians, devil’s angels, angels of darkness, misguided souls, demimonde[18], black sheep, strays from the flock, strays from the path, those who lost their way, misdirected souls, the restless throng, unfortunate souls, or simply sinners.  Wordplay has a universal character that spans a large percentage of jokes, especially sexual in nature.  American comedy had continually employed double meaning as a vehicle for humor and sex.

The most widely used, and perhaps the safest, of all ambiguous words was the term making love.  In 1900, this phrase meant exactly what it does today, that is, having physical sex.  It also came to mean having an intimate and romantic conversation.  The songwriter therefore was afforded a wonderful opportunity to use the term making love without so much as a second glance from the administrators of decency because it could just as easily mean having an intimate and romantic conversation.  Since the morality police of the era would have posterity believe sex did not exist, there was obviously no polite way to say, “Let’s make love.”

Other than the biblical Let’s know each other, which, I suspect, didn’t work all that well,  people needed to rely on additional nonverbal communication to make themselves understood.  Let’s say a young man takes a girl out on a date.  They go to a restaurant, then to a ballroom.  They have a really good time and dance a lot, and if she is willing, they go somewhere and he asks her to make love.  In this case there would be little confusion.  If he’s not so sensitive, he could always be a little more forthright like Chico Marx who, perhaps a bit too blatantly but nevertheless politely, would ask a new chorus girl “Do you fuck?”[19] which caused no confusion whatsoever.  The more direct words for sex were just as well known and used in those days as they are today.

We do know a lot of sex was going on, and there was no confusion about how to ask for it, if accompanied by the right nonverbal signs.  The only real confusion came later when historians tried to determine if people were making love or making love.  Everybody at that time seemed to know what they were doing.  They were making love.

Other confusing words are love and lover.  In the 1910 song All I Ask is Love, you must wonder what kind of love is being requested.  In the songs I Am Longing for Someone to Love Me, I Love the Ladies, or I Love You Truly, again the question is, What kind of love do these songs refer to?  The answer may be in the non-verbal communication that accompanied these songs, which we no longer have access to.  Even more telling is Jolson’s You Made Me Love You, I Didn't Want to Do It.  After hearing the song and watching Jolson on film, nobody can seriously doubt the kind of love he was singing about.  Nor can anybody really say that Love me Tonight from The Vagabond King is anything other than a one-night stand, unless they just wanted to go to his tent and “have an intimate and romantic conversation” all night.  When Cole Porter wrote Night and day, I will spend my whole life making love to you, physical sex appears to be what he had in mind.

So popular music used a lot of the ambiguous qualities of American English to describe sexual behavior.  Songwriters constantly teased the imagination of the public with metaphor, confusing words, catchy little tidbits, phrases, and innuendoes, primarily because it was a good way to sell copy.   Berlin ’s Everybody’s Doing It immediately suggests sex, and he was very good at that, although the song is not referring to sex at all, but to a type of dance, The Bear.

Here are a few really successful song s of the day:

I wonder who’s kissing her now,
I wonder who’s teaching her how.[20]  

I ain’t had no lovin’ since
January, February, June, or July.[21]

Cuddle up a little closer, lovey mine[22]

When poor Jonesy left the house each morning
they would sit and spoon.
“Tell your tootsie who you love,”
Then softly he would croon[23]

These words and phrases were purposely designed to be ambiguous.  The songwriters intentionally used multiple meanings to allow a sexual interpretation to be drawn from these songs, and I’m sure the people who listened to and sang the music did exactly that.  If a young man were to say to his girl “I ain’t had no lovin’ since January” and accompany this with the appropriate nonverbal eye and hand movements, she had no doubt at all what he was talking about.  A songwriter had to determine how much double meaning could be included in a song and how far the song could go, because a song’s popularity often depended on just how good it was at expressing ambiguous sexual ideas.

More Examples

As early as 1896 we find some good examples of ambiguous sex.  In Sweet Rosie O'Grady we notice lines that are quite suggestive of an ongoing or steady sexual relationship, because the word steady could mean a steady sexual affair.  Released at a time when public attitudes were still unaccustomed to suggestions of this nature, this song is redeemed by the injection of a social blessing (marriage), which could overcome any hint of untoward premarital behavior.

She’s my steady lady
Most everyone knows.
And when we get married…[24]

Some of the best examples of sexual ambiguity were found in the music of Jim Thornton.  He was one of the best in this area because he constantly tested the limits of what could be tolerated.  Many of the songs he wrote were intended for his wife Bonnie, the vaudeville singer, and since that was the case, he was able to get away with more daring song intimacy.  In My Sweetheart’s the Man in the Moon, he does this well:

Then behind some dark cloud, Where no one is allow’d,
I’ll make love to the man in the moon.[25]

And later in the song, we even find a clear phallic reference:

A sweet little Venus, we’ll fondle between us,

He does this again in When You Were Sweet Sixteen.

Come to me or my dream of love is ‘or.
I love you as I loved you
When you were sweet,
When you were sweet sixteen.[26]

In Good-bye, My Lady Love, Joe Howard appears to use the word faithful in the same way that we use it today.  From the lyrics it is hard to believe that the singer’s lady love was anything less than intimate, especially when he continues to ply her with terms of endearment and throw his heart all over the place with his somewhat bombastic and inflated self-worth.  His confidence indicates a lasting and therefore very close relationship with his lady love, and the use of tender love is probably about as intimate as you could get away with at that time.  But after all, this was 1904 Broadway.

So you’ve gone away,
Because your heart has gone astray.
And you promised me,
That you would always faithful be.

Goodbye, my lady love.
Farewell, my turtle dove.
You are the idol and darling of my life.
But someday you will come back to me,
And love me tenderly,
So good-bye, my lady love, goodbye.[27]

By 1909 a different perception of morality had settled into American life which was reflected more and more in music.  By that time it seemed to be quite acceptable and commonplace to sneak away with a girl and engage in kissing, heavy petting, and whatever else might happen after they’ve gone up the river far enough.  Chaperonage was no longer in style, and popular music developed lots of songs about young people running off alone together to secluded locations.  In Row, Row, Row, the young man rowed way up that river, and as he rowed he became more and more interested in his lady companion.  His rowing activity soon was to became another activity, most likely kissing, petting, and fondling.  We can imagine what happened when he got to the end of the river .

Row, row, row,
Way up the river he would row, row, row,
A hug he’d give her then
He’d kiss her now and then,
They would kiss again, then
He would row, row, row[28]

There appears to be a change in attitude about marriage also.  In Honeymoon, the man laments that it is over and now he is married and unable to pursue other activities, perhaps other women.

Honeymoon, honeymoon,
Wonder why you left so soon.
Hearts are broken when you die.
Honeymoon.
Sadder maids, wiser men,
Watch you fade away and then,
No, you’ll ner’ return again,
Honeymoon.[29]

The Joy of Sex

A lightheartedness had emerged in music by 1909  and this seems to have signaled the end of an older gloomy, resigned, stoical, sadder time.  It was the sheer joy of sex, nothing less, something entirely alien to former beliefs.  In the song Put Your Arms Around Me Honey, Hold Me Tight there is a bubbling and enthusiasm that had never really been seen before.  In my opinion, this was almost like the first Rock ‘n Roll song and it came about 50 years too early.

Put your arms around me, honey, hold me tight.
Huddle up and Cuddle up with all your might.
Oh, Babe, Won’t you roll dem eyes,
Eyes that I just idolize.
When they look at me, my heart begins to float,
Then it starts a rockin’ like a motor boat.[30]

After 1915 and on into the 1920’s, popular music continued a trend toward a more exuberant style of sexual expression.  Ambiguous wording was still used but it did become harder to interpret the meaning as anything other than sexual as in If I could be With You.

If I could be with you I’d love you strong.
If I could be with you I’d love you long.
I want you to know that I wouldn’t go,
Until I told you, honey that I love you so.

If I could be with you one hour tonight,
If I was free to do the things I might,
I’m telling you true,
I’d be anything but blue,
If I could be with you.[31]

And:

Birds do it, bees do it.
Even educated fleas do it.
Let’s do it, lets fall in love.[32]

Code Words

Code words are not quite the same thing as metaphors or ambiguous words.  Code words have special use and meaning within a cultural context to signify something quite specific and almost always sexual.  These words added secret meaning and distinctive flavor to a song, and the people who understood the code words felt like privileged members of a club.  A song became an inside joke, a private message, and had a hidden meaning that was fully understood and enjoyed only by those who belonged to the club.

Code words were restricted to vaudeville.  The public at large did not usually understand or appreciate these special words, which had to be presented almost always in blackface.  But code words became unnecessary after 1915 because the public had begun to accept songs containing other thinly disguised and therefore rather easily distinguishable sexual references.  There was no longer any need to camouflage meanings in some obscure way.  Lots of ambiguous words were around that worked just as well as the “secret” code words, and that almost everybody understood.

From its beginning, the music industry, vaudeville in particular, had used code words for sex.  In blackface jargon, a tryst was a “spoon,” and sex was referred to as “heat,” “warm,” and “fire” as in “she’s my warm baby” and “warm enough for me” and “red hot.”[33]  The reverse was also true.  A girl who was not interested in sex was described as “cold,” as in “you’re growing cold, cold, cold.”  Although much of this blackface music did not make it into popular music or had to be normalized into Standard English, the code words were still an interesting aspect of musical development and some words did pass firmly into popular use.  In this popular song the code words are easily understood:

Then again how’s the evening for a spoon?
Call around tomorrow night,
We can then put out that fire in the furnace.
My mama will sure be out of town.[34]

Today songwriters are free to write whatever they want to, and in the most sexually explicit way they want to.  In doing so it seems that a certain mystique has been lost.  A kind of finesse is no longer there.  Ambiguous words, metaphor, and code words added an aspect that is often missing in today’s clear, descriptive, sexually explicit music.

The Bird Cage Song

Von Tilzer finally broke the sex barrier for popular music in 1900. Bird in a Gilded Cage was the first mainstream song to directly address a sexual issue.  It was the first popular music piece to come out and actually state what many songs before it had only hinted at.  The “bird cage” opened new doors.

You may think she is happy and free from care.
She’s not though she seems to be.
It’s sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age,
And her beauty was sold for an old man’s gold.
She’s a bird in a guilded cage.[35]

Is it morally reprehensible to marry for money, and is the consequence of such action one’s own ruin?  Harry Von Tilzer, even though he was not able to identify the girl as a mistress, which he wanted to do [36], he still was able to suggest in the song that a relationship which is not based on true love is unworkable, and ultimately self-destructive.  This notion is an old one, but it is given new vitality.  In a modern version of this same theme, The Eagles raise those questions again in Lyin’ Eyes.  A woman who marries for money will fail in her attempts to fill the emptiness within herself, regardless of where her extramarital sexual escapades may take her.  The reason she is unsuccessful is probably because her own value system is not capable of recognizing true love, since it was that same value system that allowed her to fall into this very situation to begin with.  This is the message in Bird in a Gilded Cage, although the reason for the girl’s death is unknown.

This was a remarkable song!

Two years later, in 1903, an emboldened Von Tilzer produced another song called Mansion of Aching Hearts [36a] which was actually passed off as a follow-up to his “bird cage” song.  It is a story of the pain and loneliness experienced by a prostitute living in a brothel.  Von Tilzer was again testing the waters, and the public enthusiastically accepted this further calculated step into the uncharted reaches of musical freedom.  The song turned out to be a big hit, perhaps because of Von Tilzer’s reputation or perhaps because the public wanted more sex in its music.  In either case, by his clever use of double meaning, he was able to sell the song based on its more innocent interpretation and because it was coming in on the shirttails of his highly successful “bird cage” song.

She lives in a mansion of aching hearts,
She’s one of a restless throng,
The diamonds that glitter around her throat,
They speak of both sorrow and song;
The smile on her face is only a mask,
And many the tear that starts,
For sadder it seems, when of mother she dreams,
In the mansion of aching hearts.[37]

Sexual Freedom

The newfound interest in sex may have been due in some part to the wholesale movement of young people into the workforce.  The independence and novelty of this independent lifestyle gave new arrivals a sort of mischievous curiosity and abandon that they had never experienced while living under the rules of a traditional household.  The entertainment industry capitalized on this trend with a dramatic increase in the number of amusement parks, nickelodeons, theaters, and movie houses.  These dark and poorly lighted movie houses, in particular, became known for their encouragement of activities of a more intimate nature.  For this reason the back row of seats at movies were generally known as “lovers’ lane.”[38]  Adding more fuel to the fire, movie themes of love and romance, handsome sheiks, swashbuckling pirates, as well as intimate, prolonged kissing scenes, reinforced a notion that movie houses were perhaps intended for more than one kind of entertainment.  Popular music was quick to take note of this and soon developed songs reflecting the trend:

Take your girlie to the movies,
If you can’t make love at home.
Find a cozy corner where it’s nice and dark.
Don’t catch influenza kissing in the park.
Take your hint from Douglas Fairbanks,
And make love scenes of your own.[39]

Sources of entertainment and mischief could be easily found such as dance halls, river cruises, and hotel rooms renting for a few hours at a time, not to mention the vast amusement parks.  Coney Island in 1909 was proud to possess three of the largest amusement parks in the entire world, Steeplechase Park, Luna Park, and the biggest one of all, Dreamland.  Dreamland was presumably dedicated to “higher artistic tastes” and was so big that it tended to draw the best crowds.  Young couples could totally get lost among the many acres of rides, roller-coasters, merry-go-rounds, concessions, bushes, hedges, hideaways, coves, grottos, and abundant intimate little nooks and crannies.  It was an excellent place to have fun, intimate or otherwise.  If a young man took his date to Dreamland it was like a weekend in Vegas.

The biggest hit song of 1909 was Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland, which describes a surreptitious rendezvous at Coney Island’s most famous amusement park.

Meet me in Dreamland, sweet dreamy Dreamland
There let my dreams come true.[40]

Then came the automobile.  Hundreds of songs were written about people who made love, or somehow attempted to do so, in their automobiles, that is until the car broke down or something else happened.  One of the most popular of all early car romance songs was done in 1914 by Billy Murray. He Had to Get Under, Get Out and Get Under, and Fix Up His Automobile.

While he was dying to cuddle and squeeze.
But every minute, when he’d begin it.
He had to get under,
Get out and get under,
And fix up his automobile.
A dozen times he’d try to hug and kiss,
And then the darned old thing why it would miss,
And so he had to get under…  
Billionaire Johnson says to Johnny one day.
“Your little sweetheart don’t appreciate you.
I have a daughter who is hungry for love,
She likes to ride, by the way.”
Johnny had visions of a million in gold.
He took her riding in his little auto.
But every time that he
Went to say “marry me,”
Was the old story again.
He had to get under,
Get out and get under,
and fix up his little machine…[41]

Another area of sexual exploitation was the magazine, which was at this time mightily coming of age.  Often the covers on magazines displayed incredibly attractive women dressed in elegant and flowing ballroom attire.  The song that well marked the end of sheet music dominance in America described the predicament of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a Girl on the Magazine Cover.

My head’s in dizzy whirl,
If I met a certain girl.
There isn’t another like her.
She’s a matchless pearl.
If I met the maid divine,
I’d do nothing else but pine,
Because I know she never would be mine.

The girl I love, is on a magazine cover.
It seems they painted her just for me.
I’d fall in love, if I could ever discover
A little girl quite as nice as she.
If I could see her standing there,
I’d simply claim her and name her my queen.
And if she ever came, I would love her the same
As I love her on the cover of a magazine.[42]

By 1909, the idea of sexual freedom seemed commonplace in popular music, although this idea still had to use metaphor and ambiguous wording.  Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life has been interpreted by some as the first description in American popular music of an orgasmic experience.

For ‘tis love and love alone the world is seeking,
And ‘tis love and love alone that can repay![43]

1909  A Year of Revolution

In 1900, Harry Von Tilzer, at a high point in his career, still had to submit to moral limitations of the times and have  his wayward prostitute married in the “bird cage” song, because his publisher felt that adultery was not yet a marketable commodity.  Just nine years later, attitudes had sufficiently shifted, so much so that the presentation of adulterous sexual topics was commonplace and almost expected.  Several songs appeared that year containing references to such sexual relationships.  These songs not only sold well but caused not even a stir among the established minions of decency, who by then had pretty much abandoned hope of stopping this overwhelming onslaught of what they considered immorality and indecency.  The public perhaps realized that intimate sexual themes had always been an expression of American romantic song tradition, in one way or another.  In this brief period from 1900 to 1909, the public standard of what was morally acceptable in music had changed so much that it was hardly recognizable as the same music.

In that year Harry Von Tilzer wrote an interesting song called I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife, But Oh, You Kid.  The song sold well and reflected a growing trend toward a tolerance of wayward sexual behavior.  Whiting, Snyder and Berlin came up with My Wife’s Gone to the Country (Hurrah! Hurrah!), in which a man rejoices when obtaining a short time of freedom from his family, apparently to chase other women.  Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon was another song that describes an open invitation to intimate activities.

Also in 1909 Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland blew the top off the charts, a song which appears to refer to the amusement park at Coney Island, with its wild rides and raucous attractions, its huge and milling crowds, and its boisterous barkers.  Another interpretation which is suggested by the soft and flowing waltz music presents a place of quiet romance and intimate interaction.  The subdued tone is a metaphor for a totally different type of dreamland, like an amusement park in the bedroom.

Other songs that year continued to assault Victorian moral taboos, anywhere from clothes to sex to private conduct in the presence of ladies.  In nine years this country had gone completely topsy-turvy.  By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl, I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, and Ninette were smash hits that year.  The following year saw more sexually expressive hits as Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey, Hold Me Tight; All That I Ask is Love; Any Little Girl, That's a-Nice Little Girl, Is the Right Little Girl for Me, I’ve Got the Time, I've Got the Place, but It's Hard to Find the Girl, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Swing Me High, Swing Me Low, Two Little Love Bees, and You Are the Ideal of My Dreams.  This kind of open suggestiveness was not to be seen or tolerated back in 1900.  America was set on a course of deliberate moral re-invention that would last until the 1930’s.  America had found Elvis.

The Perfect Figure 36-26-38

When we see pictures of many stars and actresses from the late nineteenth century, our first reaction is that they are slightly overweight, especially around the hips.  Over the last 100 years, the model of the perfect women has gotten slimmer.  The acceptable size today is a taller woman, perhaps 5 feet 7 inches with a 35-24-34 proportion.  This is 6 inches taller but four inches smaller in the hips than the desirable size for women in 1900--a noticeable and expected change for over 100 years.  The songs of the 1900’s rejoiced in the size of a lady’s derriere, though many such songs remained respectfully and unobtrusively in the vaudeville circuit.  That's Where my Money Goes made it into general popularity, and the reference to battle ships is a generous compliment.

She’s got a pair of hips, just like two battle ships,
I buy her everything to keep her in style.
She wears silk underwear, I wear my ankies[44] bare.
Say boys, that’s where my money goes.[45]

And her Golden Hair…

Women let their hair grow quite long until 1920 when the bobbed look came along with flappers and wild dances.  By 1913 many women had started to let down a portion of their hair, but before this time women wrapped their hair in a tight bun on top of their heads.  None of those little wispy strands of hair hung down, for that was the sign of a loose woman—a woman who had been doing something that made her hair fall down.  A respectable woman kept her hair on the top of the head, where it was supposed to be.  Prepubescent girls could wear a portion of their hair down in public, but only to shoulder length.  Once a young lady reached puberty, she had to wear her hair up like “decent” women.  Before 1913 no respectable lady would be seen in public with any part of her hair down on her shoulders.  She would let her hair down and comb it out only when she was in the privacy of her own bedroom and ready to go to bed.

And Her Golden Hair was Hanging Down Her Back is unique because it describes the moral effects of big city life on an impressionable young woman who comes to New York from a small town.  It appears that she had her hair down because she didn’t know any better.  Anyone coming from the country knew that in the city hair is kept up in a bun.  If we were to interpret the code word “to take a stroll” to mean have sex, then the song suggests she was a ‘fallen angel” in search of clientele.  On the other hand, it may have been intended to poke fun at the strict practice of keeping the hair up in a bun. 

When she landed in the station here she took a little stroll,[46]
At ev’rything she wondered till she lost her self control,
aid she, “New York is quite a village, ain’t it? Bless my soul!”

But oh, Jane does-n’t look the same,
When she left the village she was shy:
But alas! And alack! She’s gone back,
with a naughty little twinkle in her eye.[47]

“Golden Hair” was first published in 1886 but only enjoyed limited popularity.  Soon after being cleaned up and re-published ten years later under the aegis of the indomitable promoter Monroe Rosenfeld, it became a big hit.  The importance of this song is that women did not let their hair down in public, at least not until after 1913.  Conversely, they did not sleep or have sex with their hair in a bun--it was bad enough to have it uncomfortably rolled up all day.  Obviously, women let their hair down in the bedroom when they were ready to go to bed and, presumably, have sex.  Today the expression “letting your hair down” means to let go and relax.  In 1896 I think it meant that you wanted to or were prepared to go to bed and have sex.

Prostitutes usually wore all or a portion of their hair down, indicating their trade, just as prostitutes today have characteristic clothing styles.  In 1910, the cover of Let Me call you Sweetheart featured a girl in very skimpy, loose-fitting suggestive clothes with her long hair hanging down her shoulders.  Here is this beautiful, misty, dreamy-eyed girl on the cover of the song sheet, inviting sex before God and the world.  It was a bold and remarkable statement, even for 1909.  The song was an absolute blockbuster.

Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you.
Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.
Keep the love light glowing in your eyes so true.
Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you.[48]

Oh, My! The Moon is on Fire [49]

Much of successful early popular music was by nature sexual.[50]  Moreover, the unusual combination of the rapid growth of popular music in a society that was sexually repressed presented some interesting problems and some interesting solutions as well.

An expectation was in the air when the new century came in.  For well over 50 years the country had been gripped in the clutches of piety, cloaked in a heavy vale of holiness, and smitten by a sanctimonious spirituality.  It was a temporary condition of the belief structure at best, where babies were brought by storks, men didn’t masturbate or have erections, and women didn’t menstruate or perspire or even achieve sexual gratification.  A zealous and puritanical religion held sway over the population for these 50 years and dictated that things be so.  Sex had been legislated into nonexistence.  Only “lost souls,” poor and destitute sinners, because of their station in life or gender were permitted to stray from the path of righteousness and indulge in and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

America has always been the land of opportunity and challenge.  If one wished to get ahead, to gain wealth through hard work and careful investment, then the ranks of the middle class awaited and opportunity was abundant.  Along with this upward mobility came obligations and moral responsibilities consisting of the same Victorian coda prescribed and upheld by the powers-that-be.  This set of rigorous beliefs denied the legitimacy of sexual enjoyment.  But eventually the new middle class rejected these ideas.

I suggest here that in the space of ten years, the social tables had completely turned, and Tin Pan Alley had to be responsible for some of this turning.  Obscene music and lewd dancing had left the evil confines of houses of pleasure and vaudeville districts and invaded ballrooms and dance halls.  This music had even insinuated itself into the very gut of America, that is, parlors of the middle class.  People in saloons, barbershops, and department stores chanted the new tunes of Jim Thornton, Harry Von Tilzer, Ernest Ball, and Irving Berlin.  The air was a-buzz with ragtime gals, sweetie pies, and hootchy-kootchy songs of all verities and descriptions.  Even youth had been contaminated.  All the while, the forces of the older order could only stand by, wringing their hands, as this flood of sexual openness swept by them.

In 1900 the “bird cage” song was the first to let the bird out of its cage.  Sexual attitudes began to shift, slowly at first and then more quickly.  1915 witnessed an even more dramatic display of moral openness with the advent of Jazz, the Blues, the Fox Trot, to be followed in the 1920's by the Jitterbug, Charleston, and the Black Bottom.  Things were happening so fast.

Jazz was considered by the masters of morals to be a frightful, sinful, degenerate noise that came from the self-styled Ninevah of the South, New Orleans, all the while holding hands with the twin denizens of evil out of Chicago and St. Louis.  To add to the melee came W.C. Handy, blowing Lucifer’s very own trumpet, the Blues.  If that wasn’t enough to really upset things, Whitson and Friedman threw the country into a sexual swoon with their immensely popular slow, erotic twin sex waltzes Let Me Call You Sweetheart and Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland.  It seemed that there was no longer anything left untainted by the touch of that evil shadow of darkness from the very bowels of hell called popular music.

Social progress marches irrevocably onward.  Sometimes it is slowed down by pressure from reactionary forces, but it must inevitably catch up to its own pace.  The onslaught of sexuality in the first decade of the twentieth century seemed sudden, yet it was nothing more than an adjustment after 50 years of standing still.  Building behind a giant dam that was destined to burst anyway, the water of a more open morality had to rush forth in what seemed like a torrent.  The unnatural repression of the fundamental and necessary sexual aspects of popular music had itself, in effect, created the tidal wave.  It had to come.

Nymphs and Satyr (1873)
by Adolf Bouguereau was the most
famous of all barroom paintings.