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There are more collections available of dirty-minded blues and early R&B than you can shake a metaphor-for-penis at. So one of the things this compilation offers is a welcome balancing of the genre and/or karmic scales. Another is an array of some of the most blessedly corny double entendres ever gathered in one place, from songs about selling ice (Roy Lee Brown's "Ice Man Song": "Any ice today, lady/ how 'bout a little piece today?/ . . . If you want a bigger piece/ I'll stop my horse"; Homer Zeke Clemons' "Sell the Coldest Stuff in Town") to Hank Penny's "The Freckle Song" ("She's got freckles on her but/ she's nice"). Not to mention the many songs built on falsely innocent trick endings, like "T" Texas Tyler's "I Want to Learn to Do It" (to dance, you perverts) and both versions of "The Birthday Cake Song," by Billy Hughes and Jimmie Ballard. The latter also weighs in with the ever-so-subtle "Chicken Plucker," which rhymes with watch-yo'-mouth, i.e. "I can pluck 'em better when I'm standing up."

Most of these predominantly '50s sides are spirited and aw-shucks in equal measure, though special mention has to go to a tune that doesn't even allude to actual bodies in motion; quite the opposite. In Charlie Aldrich's "Kinsey's Book," all activity stops so that everyone can read the good Dr. Alfred's work: Ball games are called off, the bars empty out, and Aldrich's 90-year-old grandma crows, "Everything I told him, he put it right in his book." Foment the sexual revolution, however secondhandedly, and you'd be proud, too.