“The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing”

Description

A customer and a prostitute engage in oral sex, "each trying to get their guns off first into the other's heads," until he offers to give it "the boar-hog grind."

Notes

Either the Carolina Twins' recording is a cleaned-up version of "The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing" or, more likely, the original of which this is a parody. There is also song called "The Convent Bells Are Ringing," of unknown relationship. - PJS

Logsdon thinks "Whorehouse" is a direct parody of "The Fatal Wedding," with which it shares a tune, but I incline to think there was an intermediate version. "The Boarding House Bells Are Ringing" strikes me as a reasonable candidate.

Logsdon's informant Riley Neal confesses that this song is "just plumb nasty." I incline to agree; most bawdy songs theoretically have a humorous element, but this one strikes me as existing only to disgust. - RBW

Same tune

• Carolina Twins, "The Boarding House Bells Are Ringing" (Victor 21575, 1928)

Cross references

• cf. "The Fatal Wedding" (tune)

References

1. Randolph-Legman II, pp. 601-603, "The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing" (3 texts)
2. Logsdon 23, pp. 145-148, "The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing" (1 text, 1 tune)
3. DT, WHBELLS*
4. Roud #10093
5. BI, RL601