{"id":901,"date":"2016-04-16T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=901"},"modified":"2024-03-14T11:17:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T15:17:03","slug":"keep-it-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/keep-it-clean\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep It Clean (Dave Van Ronk &#038; others)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Keep It Clean\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jdBFtCTOdAw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Like many of the songs I&#8217;ll be singing over the next couple of months, I got this from Dave Van Ronk. He did it on one of my favorite LPs of all time, <em>No Dirty Names<\/em>,<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-902 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/No-Dirty-Names.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"No Dirty Names\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/No-Dirty-Names.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/No-Dirty-Names.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/> and I&#8217;m guessing it was supposed to be the title song, since when I mentioned that album to him, Dave&#8217;s response was a pained grimace and the comment, &#8220;They even got the title wrong.&#8221; I never figured out why he disliked that album so much, and am convinced the problems were in the process rather than the result, since the result was one of his best records, with a terrific range of material, from old country blues to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/a-mans-a-man\/\">Bertolt Brecht<\/a>, William Butler Yeats, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/everybody-crying-mercy\/\">Mose Allison<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Keep It Clean&#8221; was one of the first songs I learned off that album, and it is kind of typical of Dave&#8217;s approach to the blues tradition. His source was a record by <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-903 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Charley-Jordan.jpg?resize=250%2C273&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Charley Jordan\" width=\"250\" height=\"273\" \/>Charley Jordan, recorded in 1930, but Dave sang different verses, changed the chorus, and set it to a guitar arrangement that bore no relation to Jordan&#8217;s. Unfortunately for those of us who enjoyed that arrangement, this was during a passing period of infatuation with open C tuning, and by the time I knew him he&#8217;d dropped it from his repertoire &#8212; when I asked him to teach me the chart, he said he couldn&#8217;t remember it. However, the obvious inspiration was Lemon Jefferson&#8217;s &#8220;Bad Luck Blues,&#8221; which is in standard tuning, so I copped that &#8212; not very well, for the first few decades, but four or five years ago I went through an intensive Blind Lemon period and figured out the nice move from C up to D in the opening riff.<\/p>\n<p>As for the song itself, I discuss it briefly in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/dozens.html\">my book on the Dozens<\/a>, and at greater length in <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-5067\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Jellycover-e1710359243890.jpg?resize=173%2C261&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"173\" height=\"261\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/jellyrollbook.html\"><em>Jelly Roll Blues<\/em><\/a>, a deeper exploration of the uncensored African American lyrical tradition, and its censorship in print and on record. It was recorded in a few different forms during the &#8217;20s and &#8217;30s, my favorite probably being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pick-poor-robin\/\">Luke Jordan<\/a>&#8216;s &#8220;Won&#8217;t You Be Kind,&#8221; with its cheerfully euphemistic &#8220;keep your back yard clean.&#8221; The more common phrase, which still turns up in rap lyrics, was &#8220;keep your booty clean,&#8221; and one of the curious facts I turned up while researching the Dozens book is that &#8220;booty&#8221; seems to derive from a West African term, bo-da, meaning, literally, ass-hole. I&#8217;ve never seen this derivation in any other source, but came across bo-da, with that meaning, in a glossary of Afro-Caribbean terms, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/so-different-blues\/\">Mance Lipscomb<\/a> explains on tape that &#8220;booty&#8221; means precisely that, noting that it is the dirtiest part of the body and even if you wash it thoroughly, in a couple of hours it will get nasty again &#8212; hence the frequency of the admonishment.<\/p>\n<p>Through the wonders of metonymy, the term often shifted a couple of inches forward, and what is being kept clean in this song need not be that specific anatomical region. As Charley Jordan (no relation to Luke) sang:<\/p>\n<p>If you want to hear that elephant grunt,<br \/>\nYou take him down to the river and then wash his trunk.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, the sexual politics of this song are egregious, in the long tradition of &#8220;Roll Her Over In the Clover&#8221; with an overlay of &#8220;Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.&#8221; No defense is possible for performing something like this in the 21st century, and I generally don&#8217;t &#8212; but I learned it around age 13 and it is an excellent example of what attracts teenage boys to blues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A song that, like much preaching, cloaks base desires in misleading admonishments. From Dave Van Ronk, via Charley Jordan, Lemon Jefferson, and others&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Keep It Clean (Dave Van Ronk &amp; others) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A song that, like much preaching, cloaks base desires in misleading admonishments. 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Dave was a great interpreter of Brecht's songs, and even appeared in an off-Broadway production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Brecht-CD-cover-296x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2549,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/losers\/","url_meta":{"origin":901,"position":1},"title":"Losers (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk intended this to be the title song of the album we ended up calling Going Back to Brooklyn -- he was proud of the song and thought as a title it would be suitably ironic, especially considering his economic situation at the time. However,\u00a0 his manager thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Going-Back-to-Brooklyn-e1685415601248.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1824,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bad-dream-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":901,"position":2},"title":"Bad Dream Blues (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Though Dave Van Ronk was not principally known as a songwriter, he wrote some damn good songs. But before he got into songwriting in more ambitious ways, he recorded a handful of blues songs for which he took author credit. He didn't consider these fully original compositions, since they had\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"blues project","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/blues-project-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":42,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sunday-street\/","url_meta":{"origin":901,"position":3},"title":"Sunday Street (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk was a close friend, mentor, and kind of a second father to me--aside from guitar, he taught me about literature, history, politics, food, jazz, the ins and outs of New York, and the vagaries of the music business. When I was studying with him in 1976-77, he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Sunday Street","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Sunday-Street.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/friend-of-mine\/","url_meta":{"origin":901,"position":4},"title":"He Was a Friend of Mine (Dave Van Ronk &#038;co)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was one of the first songs I ever heard from Dave Van Ronk, and remained a staple of his repertoire throughout his career. When he recorded it in 1963 he credited it to Bob Dylan, but in later years would say, \"I learned this from Bob Dylan, who learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"von schmidt - cahn","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/von-schmidt-cahn.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":911,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cocaine-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":901,"position":5},"title":"Cocaine Blues (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"First of all, I must state with pride and pleasure that the first time I ever tried cocaine was courtesy of Dave Van Ronk. It was in my parents' living room, late at night, after a fair amount of whiskey had been drunk, and he had it in a twist\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/van-ronk-folksinger-e1491663832129.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5086,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions\/5086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}