Ill-ustrated Songs #39 "COME IN MY MOUTH" Tobie Columbus

    “Hey, my teacher used to sing about wanting a guy to come in her mouth!” 

    Yeah. Listen: “Run your fingers through my hair as you force my mouth to open mind. Don’t you just love it there? As I drink you deep inside…you taste so good, you taste so good, you taste so good, you taste so good…”

    How about the spoken part of the song? “I wanna lick, I wanna suck…I wanna make you scream, I wanna make you the happiest man alive. I want you deep in my throat. I want to smell your sweat. I want to lap up your load…” 

    Happily for Tobie Columbus, embarrassingly ridiculous late 60’s and early 70’s porn songs are considered just that. In fact, if you even made porn films, you could enjoy a “straight” career making movies or retire to run an antique shop or something and not be chased out of town.  We’ve COME a long way. 

    COME to think of it, these days, it’s hardly a surprise if a teacher has had a student come in her mouth. As long as the come is vintage, 18 years or older, that’s fine. College professors doing it with their students is just fine. Ladies teaching high school, and finding an 18 year-old guy to get a mouthful with…that’s just delicious. While dirty MALE teachers will run into serious trouble if they come into jailbait, FEMALE teachers tend to get a slap on their masturbating wrist if they help a student through puberty. 

    But I digress. Back in 1974, a fairly ridiculous Off-Broadway show turned up called “Let My People Come.” Theater goers and comers had seen “Hair” of course, and “Oh Calcutta,” but how about something joyously and unabashedly dirty? Sort of? The musical wasn’t exactly hardcore. The lyrics for “Come in My Mouth” are at about the same level of dribble-drivel as purple prose romance books of the day. Some lines are probably as corny as what pudgy E.L. James used to drain the color of any porn connoisseur’s face to a shade of gray. 

            There was a lot of now-silly “porn” songs back then. Some were artfully pretentious, like “Je ‘Taime,” and others were ludicrous like “The Theme from Deep Throat” by Linda and the Lollipops. In between, there was the frank stuff from Frank Zappa, and the childish stuff like “Shaving Cream,” which came out of obscurity when a disc jockey was dared to play it. This thing? Pure 70’s, with the corny synths and bubbly over-done sound effects. Jeez, most hippie chicks practicing free love either had two or three kids by 1974, or were charging for sex and making movies for Jerry Damiano.

    Above is an information sheet that Tobie filled out way back when. As you see, “Let My People Come” was her first big credit. And, last. I think you’ll agree, once you hear this thing, that singing a convincing erotic song was not her specialty. When your singing is barely at the level of Andrea True, you’d better try something else. She moved on to dancing, and dance instruction.

    Fortunately for Tobie, “Let My People Come” wasn’t such a hit that her unusual name became all that well known. Besides, singing a porn song in a legit off-Broadway show is much different than actually being in porn. So she, and the members of "Oh Calcutta" and similar efforts, just dispersed, like crowds witnessing a car wreck. She moved to California, had a kid, and she taught for years and years at a school in Tujunga, California. The L.A. Times even mentioned her in a 2006 article, with no allusion to her previous come-uppance. They just noted that she and the other teachers did a great job of helping the kiddies learn their moves. Dance moves, that is:

    “At the after-school dance class Thursday, dance instructor Tobie Columbus demonstrated the basic steps for swing. "Step, touch, step, touch," she called out. Boy-girl pairs avoided eye contact as they formed two lines that stretched most of the length of the bare-floored auditorium. The students mimicked Columbus' steps, many with hands in their pockets and arms crossed. Several boys paired off with each other, too embarrassed by the formal dance style to approach girls. Later, they learned the foxtrot to "Bossy," a hip-hop song by Kelis. "You can't ask the kids to do an old dance to old music," Columbus said. "These dances can be as contemporary as when they were first created." Columbus…will make the dance classes a regular school activity. Starting in February, a group of 12 to 15 students will study social dance twice a week at no cost to them or the school.”

           I once talked with Tom Lehrer, who left behind his "sick comedy" song career to be a full-time math professor. "Do your students come up to you with copies of your old albums to sign?" Tom said that most of the kids had no idea he made records, and hardly knew about any of Lehrer's contemporaries, including Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Tom said, "Some of them are impressed when they find out I wrote a few songs for Seseme Street. Like: "Wow, you wrote SILENT Y???"

           So it's doubtful that any of Tobie's students ever came up to her and asked her to autograph "Come in My Mouth" on the back of the "Let My People Come" album. If somebody did, do you suppose it would make her scream? It would make her the happiest woman in the world? Mmmm, oooooh, uhhhhhhhh. No.

COME IN MY MOUTH    Instant download or listen on line. No Zinfart passwords, malware or spyware anywhere.