(Note: the following piece was inspired by jumpin' jivemeister Kevin Parrott's regular salute to top-notch jazz and blues tracks; it was written as part of my ongoing consideration of great releases from the Rhino reissue label.)

And now for something completely smutty. A collection of tracks from the late forties and early fifties, Risque Rhythm tracks an era when rhythm-and-blues - and its cousin rock 'n' roll - were yet to be reined in to meet the demands of youth-centric pop AM radio. Jukebox music, to be played in clubs where hard-drinkin' daddies put the eye on babes in tight dresses, this music traffics in double-entendre lyrics and ultra-suggestive singing. In an era where even teenpoppers sing about standing naked in front of their lover, most (with a few notable exceptions) of it sounds pretty restrained today. But for those of us attracted to blues or early jazz for its sexual tones, it's still a potent collection.

Some of this stuff has been remade (often less successfully) by later rock 'n' rollers: Bullmoose Jackson's "Big Ten-Inch Record," for instance, was covered by Aerosmith early its career (y'know, you just don't hear groups tryin' to wrest sexual innuendo out of CD size), while the Bees' "Toy Bell" was a leering hit for Chuck Berry in the early 70's as "My Dingaling." A few of these cuts (the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man" and the Royals' "Work with Me Annie") have become well-known established oldies, while many of the others'll show up on modern blues discs whenever the artist wants to lighten up the tone. Over the past few years, for instance, I've heard remakes of Dinah Washington's "Big Long Slidin' Thing" (it's about a trombone player - suurrre, it is!) and the jump classic "Walk Right In/Walk Right Out." That last cut is a personal fave: like earlier jump blues songs that built a rockin' band number over nursery rhyme lyrics - see Louis Jordan - this takes from fill-in-the-blank rhymes that for most of us were some of the first "dirty jokes" we'd ever heard.