Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Offbeat Holiday Music: I Want A Casting Couch For Christmas

Kay Martin and her Bodyguards : I Want A Casting Couch For Christmas

[Out Of Print]

One imagines Roger Sterling from Mad Men putting on this record at Christmas, to the delight of his chums. Ex-Playboy model Kay Martin and her Bodyguards (Jess Hotchkiss and Bill Elliot) had a thriving casino live act in the 1950s and early ’60s that was predicated on risqué lyrics of a sophisticated bent, performed with musical credibility. This lounge act was not cheesy, so the urbane man and his good lady hostess could enjoy it in good conscience.

And they could play it in company; Kay Martin’s records were popular party records, and of those the Christmas-themed I Know What He Wants For Christmas... But I Don’t Know How To Wrap It! LP from 1962 was the most successful. And how could it not be with such titles as “Hang Your Balls On The Xmas Tree” and “Santa’s Doing The Horizontal Twist”. Side 2 is a furiously double-entrendezing live recording of the stage act.

On “I Want A Casting Couch For Christmas”, Martin sings such pun-tastic lines like “Girls should be obscene, not heard”, and tells us of her manager’s soundproof apartment in which scripts are projected on the ceiling. Ah yes, Roger Sterling certainly would play that record…

Alas, it is not Kay Martin on the cover above, but a random model. Ms Martin is the nice lady on the right.

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