Chastity Belt Notes
"Chastity Belt" is a modern anonymous bawdy song which enjoyed some
popularity among rugby players in the 1960's and at folk
festivals in the UK. It is still sung by many people in the USA
and
UK but primarily among the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA) and
Renaissance Fair (Ren-Fair) groups.
The earliest I have been able to document this song is from 1956/57 at an
RAF party. Alan Rosenthal learned this song in 1956/57 at an RAF party
before the he went down to Oxford. He taught the song to Andrew Tracey who incorporated
it into the Wait a Minim!
musical. This musical through its cast
recordings and
world tours helped disperse the song throughout the English speaking
countries during the 1960's. Which accounts for the world wide
scope of
this bawdy song.
Throughout the 1960's this song was sung in rugby clubhouses along with
the
more traditional songs like "Dhina". The song after the
early 1970's seem
quite tame in comparison to what was going on and it fell out of favor
with
rugby players.
An early claim to authorship of "Chastity Belt" from the New
York program
for the musical WAIT A MINIM! which attributes the song to Jeffrey
Smith.
[See: http://users.bestweb.net/~foosie/minim2.htm
under "Sir Oswalde
Sodde"]. "Sir Oswalde Sodde" is the same song as
"Chastity Belt". The
musical opened 12th of January 1962 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Andrew Tracey who acted in this musical and was intimately involved in
the
production denies that this song was written specifically for WAIT A
MINIM!
but he remembers learning the song in the late 1950's from Alan
Rosenthal
(2).
If you have more info on Jeffrey Smith and the writing of WAIT A MINIM!,
please send an email to
.
"MikeofNorthumbria" in the mudcat.org forum archive remembers
this song from the early sixties.
He says:
The song was current among folkies at
Oxford when I was there in the early '60s, but nobody
seemed certain of the author's name. I
think it had been composed a year or two earlier, as a
comedy sketch for a student stage show.
At a very convivial party, I scribbled
down the words for Eric Winter, then Editor of the
British folk music magazine, Sing!. After obtaining the
music from my mate, Bob Pierce, Eric published the song in Sing!, in the
spring or summer of 1962.
Through that - or some other - channel,
the song reached Rory McEwan, who incorporated it into the
folk music programme he put on at the 1962 Edinburgh
Festival, along with his brother Alex, and Carolyn Hester
and Dick Farina. Since then, it seems to have gone around
the world. If the real author is out there, will he or she
please own up.
The Sing! magazine issue that has 'Chastity Belt' is Volume 6 No. 10
[June
1962]. If you have a copy of this Sing! magazine, please contact
me.
I have reports of some people learning this song directly from one of
the
WAIT A MINIM! cast recordings, others learned it from Sing! magazine
and some individuals learning the song as undergraduates at Oxford in
the
late fifties.
According to David Marks, who used to sing in WAIT A MINIM!,
"Chastity
Belt" had become "...a very popular song on the local
[Johannesburg, South
Africa] folk-circuit back in the early to mid 60's. There is a version
on
one of the Minim albums & we have many versions by various folk
singers,
recorded at the Nite Beat & the Troubadour, which, incidentally was
turned
into a sort-of acoustic Folk Revue Coffee Bar in the early 70's &
renamed -
The Chastity Belt." [Quote from a private email].
Bibliography & Discography:
Sing! magazine Volume 6 No. 10 [June 1962] edited by Eric Winter.
Rory and Alex McEwen and Carolyne and Dick Farina recorded
"Chastity Belt"
and issued it on a 1963 mono EP called "Four For Fun" on the
Scottish
Waverley Records label (see here:
http://www.richardandmimi.com/fourforfun.html
).
They met in August 1962 at the Edinburgh Festival.
It is reportedly on an EP called "In a Folk Mood" - recorded
by Graham
Kilsby issued the late 1960s (Saydisc, Specialised Recordings Ltd,
Meeting
House, Frenchay, Bristol). From sleeve notes: "... he [Graham
Kilsby] is a
very popular entertainer in this capacity as can be heard from CHASTITY
BELT: a neo-Elizabethan song recorded live at the Bristol Troubadour
Club.
Graham's several voices are joined by Alun Jones-12 string guitar,
Patrick
Small-guitar and vocal, Fred Wedlock-bicycle horn and frenzied
applause..."
In addition to the above records, Steve Benbow reportedly has a version
on
his 1967 Decca record "Of Situations and Predicaments", LK
4881.
There is also a spoonerized parody of the song "Chastity Belt"
called
"Bastity Chelt". "Bastity Chelt" is remembered
as being performed at
the folk club at Turville near Stockenchurgh on the Bucks Oxfordshire
border. Sometime in the late 1960s. (See Mudcat link above).
A version
of this song was recorded by Jasper Carrott. If you know
of other recordings of "Bastity Chelt", please send an email
to
.
The song "Chastity Belt" can be found in the 1967 book
Why
Was He Born So
Beautiful and other Rugby Songs pgs. 52-53 collected by Harry Morgan.
The song "Chastity Belt" is sung on the 1970 record
"Medical Students Sing
Rugby Songs" -- the sixth & final record in the Sportsdisc
rugby series
produced by Harry Morgan the compiler of the 1967 Rugby Songs book.
The song can be found on the Molly Bennett tape ($11 w/S&H) &
book ($7
w/S&H) entitled "The Bawdy Beautiful" [see here:
http://www.random-factors.com/folkfilk.htm
]. Order by following the link
or by snail mail by sending a check to Molly Bennett, 12199 E. Arizona
Dr,
Aurora CO 80012. Molly Bennett "learned it ca. 1988 from a fellow
performer
at the Colorado Ren Fair who billed herself as Queen of Tarts (real name
unknown)." [Private email]
"Chastity Belt" is in Bawdy Ballads and Dirty Ditties of the
Wartime R.A.F. pg. 181.
Curiously, the Bawdy Ballads editor, Harold Bennett, thinks that this
song is a WWII era song.
The song, entitled "Sir Oswald Sodde (The Chastity Belt)", is
sung by Robin
James on her 2002 "Songs of Love, Longing & Levity" CD.
(Listen to the song
& order here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/robinjames
)
(1) According to Peter Kennedy at Folktrax, this was composed by Theo
Johnson (see:
http://www.folktrax.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/menus/search%20for%20titles_ce_che.htm)
for Cambridge Footlights Revue in the 1950's (?). Please email
Peter
Kennedy <peter (at) folktrax.freeserve.co.uk> if you know the
whereabouts
of Theo Johnson. Peter is unsure who told him "Chastity Belt"
was written
by Theo Johnson but he believes that he was told this in the mid-1960's.
If you have more information about Theo Johnson, Cambridge Footlights
Revue
or the composition of "Chastity Belt", please send an email to
.
(2) Andrew Tracey [forwarded by_____ ] wrote:
No, we certainly did not
write Sir Oswald Sodde, and I don't know who did. It
was being sung by many people around the time I
was at Oxford in the late 50s. Your
correspondent obviously does
not know how old the song is.
I have a feeling I learned it from my Oxford
friend Alan Rosenthal, now Professor of Film at
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. If you feel
up to it you could write to him, saying it was me who put
you onto him...
his email is mstomiya (at) mscc.huji.ac.il
Alan Rosenthal says that Andrew Tracey did in fact learn "Chastity
Belt"
from him. So far it looks like the
late
1950's the song was being sung at Oxford.
I have tried to contact the producers & cast of WAIT A MINIM! to see if
they know of if Jeffrey Smith derived the song from another source or if
he wrote it himself.
Here are various examples of the song "Chastity Belt" in
chronological order.
/wait-a-minim-(decca-records)-01.jpg)
/wait-a-minim-(london-records)-01.jpg)
/1970-the-medical-students-sing-rugby-songs-01.jpg)
/the-best-of-jasper-carrott-01.jpg)