1958 Phone Sex Revealed

I have been listening to the song ‘Chantilly Lace’ by The Big Bopper for my whole life and I never understood that it was a supposed to be a phone conversation.   Maybe I should have been clued in by the opening line ‘Hello Baby,”  but this video clip from 1958 American Bandstand is proof positive that it was.  As you will see, it turns out that The Big Bopper was a bit of a prop comic as he performs with a telephone receiver.

After that big reveal, I was able to reinterpret the song with new ear.  This song could be about the first recorded phone sex call ever.  When The Big Bopper picks up the phone it seems like he does not even know the girl who is talking dirty to him on the other line.  This is probably autobiographical because The Bopper was better known as a disc jockey before he became a singer and those disc jockies picked up more than requests from those phone lines. (Yes, I was alluding to gonorrhea).

In the song he rhetorically asks “Do I whaaat?  Will I whaaaaat?” to the sexual advances of some hot 1950’s teenager.  And you just know the things she was asking him was not all Richie-Cunningham-from-Happy-Days ‘can I blow in you ear’ bullshit.  Other clues are that he says that she makes him feel like ‘a long neck goose.’ C’mon now, he isn’t even trying to cover it up now.

Other things to look out for in this clip is Dick Clark from 52 years ago introducing the clip and actually using the hip hop slang ‘Gyeah-yeah’ at the 20th second.