"Making love"

[davemarc]

Okay...here goes!

Re the song title "Make Love to Me," there are quite a number of songs with
that name.  You can get an idea of this at www.bmi.com.

Re the Jo Stafford version, she had a hit with a "Make Love to Me" in 1954.
I'm not sure of the composer(s) and the date when it was written.
http://svc403.bne025u.server-web.com/number_1_hits/1954.htm

Here are the lyrics, plus a midi file.
http://www.smickandsmodoo.com/aaa/lyrics/makelove.htm

Here's a RealPlayer audio sample of Stafford performing it.
http://www.content.loudeye.com/scripts/hurlPNM.exe?/~bb-600005/0056152_0102_
00_0002.ra

More than ten years earlier, on October 29, 1941, Helen Forrest recorded a
different song called "Make Love to Me" (Kim Gannon, Paul Mann, Stephan
Weiss).  Here's my attempt at a transcription of the rather "suggestive"
pre-1950 lyrics.

Make Love to Me (Kim Gannon, Paul Mann, Stephan Weiss)

Instead of making conversation,
Make love to me.
Make love to me, my darling,
While there is still a moon.

Must I extend an invitation?
Oh, make love to me.
Make love to me, my darling.
Tonight will end so soon.

There are moments when my lips adore addressing you.
But tonight my lips are only for caressing you.
But how about you?

Before the mood I'm in changes,
Make love to me.
Make love to me, my darling.
I'm so in love with you.

Mmmm.
Make love to me.
Make love to me, my darling.

I'm so in love with you.

d.
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter A. McGraw <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 2:32 PM
Subject: Re: "Making love"


> I can think of one attestation of the continued use of the "innocent"
> meaning coexisting with the 1950 cite of the sexual one.  There was a
> popular song by Jo Stafford that I remember from sometime in the 1950s,
> which started with the line, "Hold me in your arms and never let me go,"
> and ended with the line, "Make love to me!"  (I'm sure there will be
others
> who will remember the title of the song and precisely when the record was
> released.)
>
> I suppose there is only circumstantial evidence to indicate that this use
> did not carry the sexual meaning: this was the 1950s, before the sexual
> revolution.  Popular songs were much more chaste than now, and I don't
> think an overt sexual reference would have been allowed (by the publisher)
> in one.  I guess I can't prove this use was not a euphemistic one, snuck
> past a clueless censor--but even there, the very fact that any censor
could
> have been clueless about this expression would itself be further
> circumstantial evidence of the coexistence of the two meanings.
>
> Peter Mc.
>
> --On Wednesday, April 10, 2002 1:48 PM -0400 Laurence Horn
> <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
> > You can check the OED glosses to see the shift in "make love", but
> > they will leave you with a gap between a clearly "innocent" use in
> > 1860 ("How often..do we make love to the charms of cousins and
> > avuncular expectations") to a just as clearly euphemistic one in 1950
> > ("One of the Carvers made love to her and she had a baby").  The
> > shift obviously occurred somewhere in between, but it would be nice
> > to pin it down a bit more narrowly.  At the same time, we'd expect to
> > find a period of overlap, where the euphemistic and "innocent" senses
> > could both have been used before taboo avoidance (a.k.a. Gresham's
> > Law) kicked in and rendered the innocent use impossible
>
>
>
>
****************************************************************************
>                                Peter A. McGraw
>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu
>