"My Ding-a-Ling" is a
novelty song
A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and w ...
written and recorded by
Dave Bartholomew
David Louis Bartholomew (December 24, 1918 – June 23, 2019) was an American musician, bandleader, composer, arranger, and record producer. He was prominent in the music of New Orleans throughout the second half of the 20th century. Originally ...
. It was covered by
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the " Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into th ...
in 1972 and became his only number-one
Billboard Hot 100
The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...
single in the United States. Later that year, in a much, much longer unedited form, it was included on the album ''
The London Chuck Berry Sessions''. Guitarist Onnie McIntyre and drummer
Robbie McIntosh
Robbie McIntosh (born 25 October 1957) is an English guitarist. McIntosh is well known as a session guitarist and member of The Pretenders from 1982 until 1987. In 1988 he began doing session guitar work for Paul McCartney joining his band fu ...
who later that year went on to form the
Average White Band
The Average White Band (also known as AWB) are a Scottish funk and R&B band that had a series of soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980. They are best known for their million-selling instrumental track " Pick Up the Pieces", and their album ...
, played on the single along with
Nic Potter
NIC may refer to:
Banking and insurance companies
* National Insurance Corporation, Uganda
* NIC Bank, a commercial bank in Kenya
Politics, government and economics
* National Ice Center, an agency that provides worldwide navigational ice a ...
of
Van der Graaf Generator
Van der Graaf Generator are an English progressive rock band, formed in 1967 in Manchester by singer-songwriters Peter Hammill and Judge Smith, Chris Judge Smith and the first act signed by Charisma Records. They did not experience much commerc ...
on bass.
"My Ding-a-Ling" was originally recorded by
Dave Bartholomew
David Louis Bartholomew (December 24, 1918 – June 23, 2019) was an American musician, bandleader, composer, arranger, and record producer. He was prominent in the music of New Orleans throughout the second half of the 20th century. Originally ...
in 1952 for King Records. When Bartholomew moved to Imperial Records, he re-recorded the song under the new title, "Little Girl Sing Ting-a-Ling". In 1954, the Bees on Imperial released a version entitled "Toy Bell".
Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts
Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, also known as Doug Clark and his Hot Nuts, The Hot Nuts and, since the death of Doug Clark in 2002, Doug Clark's Hot Nuts, is an American rhythm and blues, rock and novelty band that has played party and club dates fo ...
recorded it in 1961, and it was part of their live act for many years. Berry recorded a version called "My Tambourine" in 1968, but the version which topped the charts was recorded live during the Lanchester Arts Festival at the Locarno ballroom in
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, on 3 February 1972 by the Pye Mobile Recording Unit - engineered by Alan Perkins, where Berry – backed by the
Roy Young Band – topped a bill that also included
Slade
Slade are an English rock band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966. They rose to prominence during the glam rock era in the early 1970s, achieving 17 consecutive top 20 hits and six number ones on the UK Singles Chart. The ''British Hit Singles ...
,
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of countercul ...
,
Billy Preston
William Everett Preston (September 2, 1946 – June 6, 2006) was an American keyboardist, singer and songwriter whose work encompassed R&B, rock, soul, funk, and gospel. Preston was a top session keyboardist in the 1960s, during which he ba ...
and
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philo ...
. Boston radio station
WMEX disc jockey
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music f ...
Jim Connors was credited with a gold record for discovering the song and pushing it to #1 over the airwaves and amongst his peers in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. ''Billboard'' ranked it as the
No. 15 song for 1972.
The song is based on the melody of the 19th-century folk song "
Little Brown Jug". Bartholomew's 1952 version contains a
Shave and a Haircut
"Shave and a Haircut" and the associated response "two bits" is a seven-note musical call and response (music), call-and-response couplet, Ostinato#Riff, riff or fanfare popularly used at the end of a musical performance, usually for comedic e ...
motif.
Content
The song tells of how the singer received a toy consisting of "silver bells hanging on a string" from his grandmother, who calls them his "ding-a-ling". According to the song, he plays with it in school, and holds on to it in dangerous situations like falling after climbing the garden wall, and swimming across a
creek infested with
snapping turtles
The Chelydridae is a family of turtles that has seven extinct and two extant genera. The extant genera are the snapping turtles, ''Chelydra'' and '' Macrochelys''. Both are endemic to the Western Hemisphere. The extinct genera are '' Acherontemy ...
. From the second verse onward, the lyrics consistently exercise the
double entendre
A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
in that a
penis
A penis (plural ''penises'' or ''penes'' () is the primary sexual organ that male animals use to inseminate females (or hermaphrodites) during copulation. Such organs occur in many animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but males do n ...
could just as easily be substituted for the toy bells and the song would still make sense.
Critical reception
The lyrics with their sly tone and innuendo (and the enthusiasm of Berry and the audience) caused many
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
s to refuse to play it. British morality campaigner
Mary Whitehouse
Constance Mary Whitehouse (; 13 June 1910 – 23 November 2001) was a British teacher and conservative activist. She campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permiss ...
tried unsuccessfully to get the song banned. Whitehouse wrote to the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
that "One teacher told us of how she found a class of small boys with their trousers undone, singing the song and giving it the indecent interpretation which—in spite of all the hullabaloo—is so obvious ... We trust you will agree with us that it is no part of the function of the BBC to be the vehicle of songs which stimulate this kind of behaviour—indeed quite the reverse."
In ''Icons of Rock'', Scott Schinder calls the song "a sophomoric, double-entendre-laden ode to
".
remarked that the song "permitted a lot of twelve-year-olds new insight into the moribund concept of 'dirty.
, replaced the song with an optional extra when it aired a rerun of a November 18, 1972 broadcast of ''AT40'' (where it ranked at #14)
on December 6, 2008. Among other stations, most
-owned radio stations to whom the ''AT40'' 1970s rebroadcasts were contracted did not air the rebroadcast that same weekend, although it was because they were playing
and not because of the controversy. Even back in 1972, some stations would refuse to play the song on ''AT40'', even when it reached number one.
The controversy was lampooned in ''
student attempts to sing the song during the school's talent show. He barely finishes the first line of the refrain before an irate
* ''The Billboard Book of Number One Hits'' (5th edition), Billboard Books, 2003,
* Guterman, Jimmy and O'Donnell, Owen. ''The Worst Rock-and-Roll Records of All Time'', New York: Citadel, 1991,