Can't Help Lovin' That Man is a 1993 compilation album of love songs from the 1920s and 1930s, sung by and addressed to men. Its original release included liner notes providing historical context to the recordings:
It's not just that it's a bunch of old 20s and 30s love songs directed irrevocably at men; it's that they also happen to be sung by men. The result is a sexually titillating aural fest that staggers the queer imagination.
And why did these musical Don Juans choose to sing such homoerotic odes? Because they felt "that way" with such burning urgency that they just couldn't wait to put their emotions on shellac 78s? No, dear. Because back then, song publishers had such a stranglehold on the popular music industry that you didn't dare tamper with a song lyric—even if you were a guy singing a tune written for a gal.
As a result, Can't Help Lovin' That Man brings us the deadpan, gotta-pay-the-rent renditions of numbers about longing for Mister Right, all done by jaw-dropping variations on Mister Wrong. They obligingly croon "He's My Secret Passion;" sizzle with professionalism singing "Can't Do Without His Love," catch yet more layers of unwitting irony in "Am I Blue?" ("Was I gay? Till today?…"); and even become hustlers as they deliver "Love for Sale" ("Who will buy? Who would like to sample our supply?") in a college band version that's so rinky-dink that it wasn't released until now. Even its having been recorded on April 1st can't begin to explain this one.
But back then there was so little social consciousness of homosexuality that the idea of guys singing to each other was taken without any potentially racy connotations. Gayness was so out of the question (publicly, anyway) that men could render these passionate words without anyone thinking anything of it—they were just doing, by necessity, tunes written with pronouns that didn't happen to match. The songs were sung straight, as it were.
Most of them, anyway. There are a few intentionally campy numbers represented here that have the singer flouncily assuming gayness in order to make quite intentional fun of it. "Help!," by Earl Gresh and His Gangplank Orchestra (not the Beatles), is sung from the point of view of a prissy queen—or maybe even a drag—named Oscar who's terrified of the opposite sex ("Help! The girls are after me… Look out dear, you'll break my necklace"). Guy Lombardo's "Pu-leeze! Mr. Hemingway" has an equally excitable male vocal trio who scream for help when those of the same sex get too romantic, not that they'd mind a little nookie with them, within limits. "I'm not a caveman/So remember not to play too rough," they admonish, as this overly indulgent fellow reveals he's brutishly interested in only one thing.
More welcoming, "Come Up and See Me Sometime" is a camp novelty number that has Cliff Edwards (a/k/a Ukulele Ike) vocally batting his lashes and informing some guy, a la Mae West, that he has "a flat where you can hang your hat." The song was so off-the-wall that it wasn't released until '68. And one more ditty pokes fun at the blurring lines of sexual demarcation in a way that seems to come from a distinct feeling of threat. "Masculine Women, Feminine Men" by Merritt Brunies and His Friars Inn Orchestra, expresses alarm about how "It's hard to tell 'em apart today," what with all these zany androgynous types running around confusing everyone.
The songs vary greatly in quality, partly because if you didn't have a first-rate band, they didn't exactly hand the top songs on a silver platter. But there are some classics represented ("The Man I Love," "I Got Rhythm"), and even when the material is dubious, the fun is in what the bands did with it, and how they accommodated the fact that they had male vocalists (crooning was considered very unladylike at the time, and the few exceptions, like Sophie Tucker, were butch enough to prove the rule more than break it). When the guys sang in creamy upper registers that verged on falsetto—like Bill Coty's on "He's My Kind of a Man"—it added even more layers of musical, and sexual, intrigue.
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