Harry Roy & His Bat Club Boys — My Girl’s Pussy

While searching for recordings of R. Crumb’s Sweet Shellac radio show (from BBC Radio 3, a few years ago), I came across this little gem of English double entendre thirties jazz. If you’re fortunate enough to have a copy of my Love at First Sound mix CD, you’ll have heard Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders perform a loving remake of this sweet record, complete with cod-English accents.

The double entendre smut is laid on trowel thick: worthy of the great Mrs. Slocombe herself, in fact.

Of course you can find whatever you want on the ole international packet switching network, if you’re smart or dogged enough (or both), and I tracked down Sweet Shellac on eyecandyman's interesting blog of old-time music and Honk Honk exploitation movies. He’s even got video of R. Crumb and his fellow old-time music enthusiast Robert Armstrong listening to this very record.

Take care to remove your gloves.

Listen:

Download it from rapidshare: My Girl’s Pussy.

Susan Cadogan — Hurts So Good

I must have heard this song on the Radio in the early seventies, when I still had that child’s thirsty cultural-vacuum-cleaner brain: and for years later the chorus would leap back into my mind at odd moments, though I couldn’t remember the title or artist. Before I’d even heard of double tracking (recording a lead vocal twice to beef up a weak performance) I would think of it as that “hurts-so-good” sound. Until I eventually found it by accident on one of those cheapo reggae compilation LPs, in the eighties. And the reason it had stuck became clear: it was a Lee “Scratch” Perry production.

Listen:

Download it at rapidshare.com

But then I found out that it was actually a Millie Jackson song. Of course I should have known: Millie is, after all, the queen of the I-Love-You-You-Bastard genre. Here she is singing it on Soul Train, in 1973 at a guess:

Millie Jackson - Hurts So Good Uploaded by soulpatrol

The Mighty Terror – Women Police in England

The best known story about the Mighty Terror is probably too good to be true: how, when he arrived in from Trinidad in London in 1953, he asked the taxi driver to take him to the home of Lord Kitchener. The terror was obviously (to us) referring to the Great Calypsonian, but the confused taxi driver at first thought he was referring to the long-dead British Imperialist War Hero. Hilarious consequences ensued. Right.

Anyway, for us bleeding-heart liberal middle class muddle-headed do-gooder pinko types, the only time we can tolerate Sexism or Affection for the Police Force is when it comes out of the mouth of an Ethnic Minority Person. Here's The Terror fondly dreaming of being arrested by a nice “blondie one”.

Listen:

Download The Mighty Terror – Women Police in England MP3 (rapidshare)

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan — Stone Cold Dead in the Market

I went along to Club Tromolo at Glasgow's Classic Grand Club the other evening and was bowled over by the duets performed by Miss Leggy Pee and her partner, Charlie. The evening went from pleasant to sublime when I, your original never-won-a-thing-in-me-life chap, won the grand prize in the raffle: a half bottle of Buckfast!

So, in this non-PC duet spirit, here’s some more ersatz calypso: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan’s 1947 hit Stone Cold Dead in the Market. Ah, those good old carefree Andy Capp days of humourous domestic violence.

Listen:

Download Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan — Stone Cold Dead in the Market MP3 (rapidshare)

I haven’t been able to find any information about the song’s history: not even whether it’s a Truly Trinny calypso song, or a piece of tin pan alley fakery; but here’s the song on one of those forties proto-promo-video “soundies”: in this case performed by Gracie Barrie.