10 Songs From the 1950s About Getting Wasted
After New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo runs a closes third with its built-in association with alcohol. We don’t give gifts, hunt eggs, trick-or-treat, or carve up a turkey, and in fact most people I know see every May 5th simply as an excuse to drink. I’ve given up trying to figure up what’s permissible and what’s not in music these days, but I do know that for most of the “REBEAT years,” it wasn’t always politic to sing about drinking. The ’50s, though, were a little different.
As I’ve pointed out twice before in 10 risqué 50s songs about sex and 10 more risqué 50s songs about sex, you could argue that the idea of something being politically correct or incorrect simply didn’t seem to exist in regard to R&B music in the ’50s. Even more so than the innuendo-laden songs about sex I covered in those two pieces, songs about drinking were actually more common — and unlike the risqué songs about sex, most of the drinking-related songs charted and sold extremely well. Songs about how much you drank, what you drank, and getting knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk were not off limits and were often very, very popular.
This week, I want to take a look at 10 of these songs, many of which were hits and all of which must have been composed by writers working on a major hangover.
1) “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-dee-o-dee,” Stick McGhee (1949)
After Granville “Stick” McGhee was discharged from the army in 1946, McGhee, along with brother Brownie and friend Dan Burley, laid down a track Stick used to sing in the service, “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-dee-o-dee” (Spo-dee-o-dee is reported to be the leftovers and dregs of many wine bottles, poured together and passed around). However, Stick’s army version had been quite different and quite profane (“Drinkin’ wine m***** f****r, G*d**n!”), and since that wasn’t going to be allowed on the radio, a cleaned-up version was released on the tiny Harlem label. It went nowhere, but one of the men who would establish Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun, heard the song and liked it, so in February 1949, he had Stick, with Brownie on guitar and “Big Chief” Ellis on piano, rerecord it with a new uptempo rhythm. The record was Atlantic’s first big hit, going all the way to #3 on the R&B charts and staying on the charts well into 1950 (hence its inclusion here).
McGhee continued to record, and made a career out of doing similar songs such as “Drank Up All the Wine Last Night,” “Double Crossin’ Liquor,” and “Jungle Juice.” Over the years, “Drinkin Wine Spo-dee-o-dee” has been covered many times by artists as diverse as Jerry Lee Lewis, Wynonie Harris, and Kid Rock. Its party-time feel makes it a classic for the ages.
2) “I Got Loaded,” Peppermint Harris (1951)
Peppermint Harris (born Harrison Nelson) got his start in the 1940s, and during the 1950s, he cut dozens of records for labels large and small and as diverse as Modern, Sittin’ In With, X, Dart, Cash, Combo, and Money. But it was this 1951 hit he recorded for Aladdin for which he was best known. His song of the “juice really flying” where, “I got loaded, oh I sure got high” went all the way to #1 on the R&B charts in the pre-Billboard Hot 100 days. Unfortunately, while it was just his second record to make the charts, it would also be his last.
3) “One Mint Julep” The Clovers (1952)
Today, if you’re familiar with the Clovers at all, it may be due to what was actually the last chart record they’d ever have, the 1959 Leiber and Stoller–penned semi-novelty song “Love Potion #9.” It would be their highest-charting pop record and their best-selling single, going to #23 on the pop charts. But for more than a decade before that, they were a major R&B act, mainly recording for Atlantic Records. Their third Atlantic release was 1952’s “One Mint Julep,” the story of a man who ended up married all because of “One Mint Julep.” It’s a humorous take on the evils of drink, as the man and a girl he meets have a few “nips,” but then he kisses her and one thing leads to another. Later the man tells us, “I got six extra children from a-getting frisky,” and so the dangers of drink are all too apparent. As one of the most popular drinking songs of the 1950s, it went to #2 on the R&B charts; in 1961 Ray Charles would also chart with “One Mint Julep” when his cover went to #8 on the pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts.
4) “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer,” Amos Milburn and His Chickenshackers (1953)
Amos Milburn had a lot of success with drinking songs such as “Bad Bad Whiskey,” “Let Me Go Home, Whiskey,” and “Thinking and Drinking,” but this is by far his best-known recording today. Here, however, instead of looking for a party, this is a guy who is drowning his sorrows as he looks for his girl. Like most of the songs on this list, “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer” charted high on the R&B charts, going to #2. This song has since been covered many times, by the likes of John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood & the Destroyers, and the Blues Brothers.
5) “Drunk,” Jimmy Liggins (1953)
Though Jimmy Liggins didn’t have quite as many chart records as his brother Joe (see below), he had a colorful life and several careers: he was a professional boxer, owned a record company, and eventually opened a music school in North Carolina. Obviously, he was a singer too, and in many circles, Jimmy Liggins is known as having arguably recorded one of the first rock ‘n’ roll records, “Cadillac Boogie.” He also recorded “I Ain’t Drunk”(1953) as well as this one, “Drunk.” Though “Drunk” is a bit fast and raucous, it fits right in with the party atmosphere that it alludes to. His message about the negative affects of drinking — “Reach for the pillow, miss the whole durn bed,” and, “Reach for knob, miss the whole durn door” — was probably lost on most listeners, because Liggins doesn’t sound like he regrets his experiences all that much after all.
6) “Whiskey, Women and Loaded Dice,” Joe Liggins (1954)
One year after his younger brother Jimmy released “Drunk,” Joe, the more famous of the two and the leader of the well-known band the Honeydrippers, released this cover of a song “Stick” McGhee had released in 1953. Even now, Joe and his group still tie the record for having a song at the top of the charts for the longest run, as 1945’s “The Honeydripper” sat at #1 on the R&B charts for 18 straight weeks and sold two million records. Even though Joe’s blues and swing hits were generally about everything but drinking, by the 1950s he, too, jumped on the bandwagon with “Pink Champagne,” “Whiskey, Gin, and Wine,” and this song. I feature it here instead of McGhee’s original because it had a much more polished sound, and because as a result of Joe Liggins’ fame his version got a lot more airplay than the original. Joe tells us that not only was drinking whiskey a problem for him, but women and loaded dice didn’t help either. As he says:
I must confess
Boys, you better take my advice
Whiskey, women, and loaded dice
Will keep you in a mess
7) “Drunk Again,” Champion Jack Dupree (1954)
Though New Orleans-born “Champion” Jack Dupree got his nickname from his days as a boxer who fought more than 170 bouts, music was always his great love. During his career, he recorded under several names including Meat Head Johnson, Lightnin’ Jr., and Brother Blues, and while recording for more than 21 labels, he never had that one big popular chart hit that some of the other musicians from his era did. Nevertheless, he recorded some of the finest blues music you’ll ever hear.
“Drunk Again” is a little different from most of the other songs on this list, as it’s the tale of a drunk woman who comes stumbling into the bar where Jack plays piano, her hair clutched in her hand.
I had to move last night cause you hollered so loud
you was drunk… you don’t remember a thing you saidYou wake up in the morning
looking like an old dish rag
you look in the face like one of them old sea hags
when you drunk…
Though in the 1950s the phrase “trainwreck” wouldn’t have been used to describe someone like this, Jack’s female friend, “Whose breath smells like bed-bug juice,” has to be a textbook example.
8) “I Wasn’t Thinkin’ I Was Drinkin,’” The Checkers (1954)
The Checkers were a group who came about when bass singer Bill Brown, whose notable voice you hear as Lovin’ Dan on the Dominoes risqué mega hit “Sixty Minute Man,” left that group and started his own. Among the songs the Checkers would do was 1954’s “Don’t Stop Dan,” Brown’s reprise of his the “Lovin’ Dan” character from “Sixty Minute Man.” That same year, they did this song, which addresses what happens if you drink too much and then act like Lovin’ Dan and sleep around too much. This time, our unnamed “hero” apparently drank too much and fathered a baby. The judge wants him to man-up, drinking or not, and his defense for his actions is simply “I wasn’t thinkin’ I was drinkin.” Perhaps a cautionary tale to those who spent too many drunken nights tomcatting around.
9) “Hey Bartender,” Floyd Dixon (1954)
Like others on this list, Floyd Dixon did his share of drinking songs, such as “Wine, Wine, Wine” and “Hole in the Wall.” “Hey Bartender” is the story of a genial drunk who goes out with his friends, gets drunker and drunker, and eventually hits on “a chick sittin’ on the end” of the bar. He tells the bartender to “draw one, draw two, draw three more glasses of beer” — repeatedly. They have so much fun that before they know it, it’s 4 AM and last call, though he calls for three more glasses of beer! Floyd Dixon wrote and recorded the original in 1954, but it was such a solid song that everyone who recorded it after that had a success with it, too. It was covered by Caribbean ska singer Laurel Aitken in 1961, by the Blues Brothers in 1978, and in 1983, country singer Johnnie Lee took it to #2 on the country charts in the US and #1 in Canada.
10) “Nip Sip,” The Clovers (1955)
After the success of “One Mint Julep,” like many artists, the Clovers followed up with several other songs that dealt with drinking in some way, including 1954’s “Your Cash Ain’t Nothing but Trash,” in which the hero does tell us a judge fined him $20 for being drunk. The biggest of these was “Nip Sip,” released in August 1955, which addresses taking a little nip every now and then “when I wanna get my whistle wet,” and setting aside a “dollar for my nippin’ and a dime for my lunch.” It was successful as well, going to #10 on the R&B charts, making it one of 19 Top 10 R&B hits for the group during the 1950s.
Perhaps not surprisingly, just as had been the case with the rash of double-entendre-laden songs about sex in the early 1950s, the drinking songs so popular on R&B radio in the early ’50s became less pervasive on the airwaves in the late 1950s. This was probably because as what were formerly exclusively “white music” radio stations gradually began to play more R&B, popular music radio stations demanded that songs be a bit more family friendly than had been the case on the more obscure R&B stations. As a result, though there have always been and always will be popular songs about drinking, one might say the early ’50s were truly the hey-day for songs about getting wasted.
