Sally Dripper

Sally Dripper

‘A Little Baby in My Tummy’ c/w ‘When God Opens the Womb’

Released 9^th June 1967. Felt Hat FH146767

Felt Hat records had specialised in religious recordings since the early nineteen fifties and Sally Dripper was their biggest star.

The label scored a massive hit in late 1966 with the album ‘Sing All Ye Merry Hearts for Yon Christmas Yuletide Time!’ -  a recording of a carol service in the famously deconsecrated church of St Peters in what was then Winchester, which was then in Surrey when it was part of Middlesex.

Apart from an early failure (‘Please Don’t Nail Him to the Cross!’ by The Archangels), their first serious foray into the pop market was this single by Sally Dripper. Dripper had been discovered singing hymns in a shop doorway on a depressing wet Sunday afternoon in Rotherham town centre by Sammy Crime, then a top record producer (‘If You Don’t Let Me Touch You, I’m Off!’ by The Mort d’Arthyrs was his most well-known recording).

“There was something about the quality of her voice that appealed to me”, says Crime, who has been Samantha Crime for the last twenty-two years. “I tried to pull her in that shop doorway, but she wasn’t having any of it. I liked that. She had spunk. She was a devout Christian and wanted to spread the Good News. She also had great low-slung bristols, which was what sold records in them days. I came on to her several more times, but it never worked. I was barking up the wrong low-slung booby tit-tree”.

A sworn enemy of promiscuity, pre-marital sex and the depiction of lewd images, Dripper wanted to make a record that instructed Christian children about the realities of Sex. She believed that it was solely for reproduction and that if God had wanted women to enjoy intercourse he would have given them some sort of ‘special pleasure bud’.

She had married young and a week later was pregnant with her first child (this was Rotherham, you have to remember). It was after her first birth that she took to singing hymns in shop doorways. ‘A Little Baby in My Tummy’ went straight to number one in the UK charts, knocking ‘Barrel of Girls’ by The Vaticans from the number one slot.

Nowadays, it’s difficult to imagine a song with such explicit sexual lyrics getting as far as being recorded, let alone released, but Dripper’s demure, Christian image, combined with the light folk backing supplied by Sammy Crime (using Julian Coward from The Empire Daughters on acoustic guitar and kazoo), made the whole thing into something special that effortlessly bypassed the BBC censors.

“There was something in her voice that was definitely alluring and full of promise in a sort of deeply perverse way that I can’t quite put my finger on”, says Crime today. “Apparently, she had a pet stick insect which she burnt”.

As my husband Philip disflowers me upon our wedding night

His largeness revealing itself in the bedroom light

So with the help of Jesus we are soon conjoined as one,

And after thirty seconds, we make a little son.

A little baby in my tummy

Growing into a man

                                                         I will be its mummy

And feed it from my swollen, milk-filled udders

Whenever and wherever I can, oh Lordy.

The success of the single spawned an album filled with weird, ambiguous, religion-based perversity and, for those interested in such things, it’s just been released on CD by Universal, with four bonus tracks, one of them the previously unavailable B-side of the single and another three songs which were not included in the final track listing.

Side One

1. Your Pleasure, My Pain

2. Guilty Looks across the Old Breakfast Table

3. Vigorously Impregnated On Whit Sunday

4. When a Husband’s Hands Feel Cold

5. Satan Made You Suggest That

6. Shame on You for Suggesting That

Side Two

1. Thoughts of Shame

2. Impaled On Your Manhood Again

3. Satan Makes Love to Me Once More

4. Cold Hands in the Dead of Night

5. Punished for Enjoying a Woman’s Love

6. I Dread Your Touch

Bonus Tracks

7. When God Opens the Womb

8. Heavy with Milk (But My Body Still Has Needs)

9. Chastised By Whip, Cane and Tawse

10. Speedily Impregnated on Michaelmas Eve

As a postscript, internet blooger (sic) Harry Chymaes regards this album as ‘Easily the most erotic piece of popular music recorded in the last seventy years. Nothing can touch it.’