For the month of December I’ll be doing my Instagram advent calendar on the topic of sex work and popular music. My first one is an obscurity but a goodie.
Song Title: Sweet Cream Ladies Forward March
Songwriters: Stroll/Weinstein
Performers: The Box Tops, Mala Records, 1968
Top US chart position: 28
Top Canadian chart position: 3
When I first researched the intersections of sex work and music several years ago, I came across the song “Sweet Cream Ladies Forward March” by The Box Tops. Although I’m old enough to have heard it on the radio in its heyday, it wasn’t familiar to me. I suspect no one is going to find this bizarre little gem as fascinating as I do, but I’m compelled to write about it, especially since I’ve never heard it mentioned by anyone else when discussing sex work in popular culture.
I found it to be essentially positive toward sex workers, beginning with the lines “Sweet cream ladies forward march/The world owes you a living”) in spite of several WTF moments, such as another line which touts the ladies as doing a public service that might “keep a simple fellow out of jail.” I read this as a version of the oft-employed and well-intended rationalization that we serve a public function by giving men an outlet for their sexual urges so they won’t be driven assault anyone. This argument has always annoyed me because, first of all, even the most sexually-frustrated men are perfectly able to restrain themselves from going around raping people. Secondly, it’s not actually our responsibility to keep men from assaulting people. And finally, we don’t need more excuses for our jobs than others do for theirs because our motives for working are the same. That makes us sound like a necessary evil, when I’m guessing the songwriters, Stroll and Weinstein, were trying to express acceptance that we’re valid working members of society. Still, it was about hookers being entitled to feel valued and proud, so it was definitely not whorephobic — especially considering its era. Read the full lyrics.
The Box Tops’ lead singer, Alex Chilton, was 16 when their number-one hit “The Letter” was released and 18 at the time SCL was released. I’ve read that several radio stations banned it and that the band’s management tried to claim that it was about Salvation Army ladies, but I haven’t been able to find a quote to validate that claim. Despite the band’s success Chilton later spent years in menial jobs, including janitorial work, before he re-entered the music scene with Big Star, and is considered a major influence on indie music , including producing some of the Cramps’ most iconic work.
The term “sweet cream ladies” isn’t familiar to me otherwise, and I know a lot of euphemisms for erotic laborers. When I searched for it on newspapers.com the only place it came up was in a 1969 article about a presentation at an anthropological conference from the Nanaimo Daily News, a Canadian newspaper:
This gives me yet another opportunity to remind people that the term “sex worker,” as we know it, didn’t exist before the 1970s.
However, my favorite thing about the song is that it was later parodied in a Jell-O cream pie commercial that is a peaen to domesticity:
Talk about full service!
Do you know this song? Are you familiar with the term “sweet cream ladies"? Do you love delicious cream pies?
As always, I write without an editor, so corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Love every bit of this. I also never heard that song and reading the lyrics, the Jello ad made a risky choice! In the news article they list different kind of informants one of them being T. O.. what is that? Do you know.
I just love all the history you uncover.
Fascinating! Of course I remember "The Letter" from Top 40 read in my youth (southern Michigan - CKLW out of Windsor, Ontario), but "Sweet Cream Ladies" is new to me -or maybe I'd just forgotten...