BILL MESNIK'S SUNNY SIDE OF MY STREET PRESENTS: YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY BY JULIE LONDON (LIBERTY, 1969) EPISODE #90

DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS

This cut, from Julie London’s album of the same name, became a camp classic. It’s undeniably bawdy, with the torch songstress purring like a mod Mae West, with tongue solidly in cheek. The original, generated by neutered, pre-fab bobble heads, The Ohio Express, is a prepubescent rocker, lacking any lubriciousness whatsoever, but, emanating from Julie’s throat it’s an open invitation to bed, or a post-coital pillow declaration.

Julie is Her Name, her first album, was released in 1955, and YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY was her last, arriving in 1969, when she was 43 years old. Being an aging sex star is hard, but doing it in the 1960s during the youth movement must have been agonizing. Following this, she retired from recording altogether to concentrate on her acting career, which served her well. In ’72, her ex-husband, Jack Webb, cast her in the tv show Emergency! alongside her current spouse Bobby Troup,- (the composer of Route 66) - and that show lasted 6 years.

In 2000, throat cancer claimed the life of the sultry voiced siren, after a lifetime of dedicated smoking. She was 74, leaving behind a discography full of yearning and heartache. I discovered her decades after her Hey Day, on a collection of Lounge numbers, and was smitten.