Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy

Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy
Studio album by Alex Chilton
Released	1999; February 22, 2000 (USA)
Recorded	February 21, 1999
Genre	Rock, jazz, soul, blues
Length	41:16
Label	Last Call Records, Bar/None
Producer	Alex Chilton
Alex Chilton chronology
A Man Called Destruction (1995) Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy (1999)
Alternative cover
Cover of the US release

Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy is an album by the American pop-rock musician Alex Chilton, released in 1999. It was released in the USA in 2000 under the title Set. It was subsequently released on a double CD with one of Chilton's previous albums, Clichés.

The album consisted wholly of cover versions of older songs, some of which have been recorded by several other artists.

Title

The title of the album comes from an old off-color joke that was made infamous in 1976 by politician Earl Butz, who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The quote of Butz using the joke in reference to Black Americans, reported in Rolling Stone magazine in an article by White House counsel John Dean, caused a controversy which ultimately led to Butz's resignation from the Ford Administration. Butz was speaking privately to entertainers Sonny Bono and Pat Boone, and to Dean, and was asked by Boone why the Republican Party had trouble attracting African-American voters when it was the party of Abraham Lincoln. As Time magazine later reported, "The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign. Butz said: 'I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit.'"^[1]

The same joke was a favorite line by comedian Slim Pickens, who made himself the target of the joke. In a 1972 Rolling Stone magazine article, Pickins was quoted as saying the line to writer Terry Southern in 1963 during the filming of Dr. Strangelove.^[2]

Track listing

1. "I've Never Found a Girl" (Booker T. Jones, Eddie Floyd, Alvertis Isbell) – 3:45
2. "Lipstick Traces" (Naomi Neville) – 3:27
3. "Hook Me Up" (Johnny "Guitar" Watson) – 4:16
4. "The Oogum Boogum Song" (Alfred J. Smith) – 3:26
5. "If You's a Viper" (Leroy Smith) – 2:16
6. "I Remember Mama" (Shirley Caesar, Michael Mathis, Bernard Sterling, Dottie Sterling, Ann Price, Mae Newton) – 3:46
7. "April in Paris" (E. Y. Harburg, Vernon Duke) – 3:29
8. "There Will Never Be Another You" (Mack Gordon, Harry Warren) – 2:18
9. "Single Again" (Gary Stewart) – 2:55
10. "You've Got a Booger Bear Under There" (Ollie Hoskins, Quinn Golden) – 4:39
11. "Shiny Stockings" (Frank Foster) – 4:03
12. "Goodnight My Love" (John Marascalco, George Motola) – 2:55

Personnel

• Alex Chilton – guitar, vocals
• Ron Easley – bass guitar, backing vocals
• Richard Dworkin – drums
• Recorded at Sear Sound, New York City
• Engineered by Tom Schick
• Assisted by Todd Parker
• Mixed at Ardent Studios, Memphis, Tennessee in June 1999
• Mélange auteur – Don Bell
• Mix and overdub engineer – Pete Matthews
• Sleeve design by Louis Sutter
• Photography by Vincent Lignier

References

1. "Exit Earl, Not Laughing". Time. New York, NY: Time, Inc. October 18, 1976.
2. Robert Greenfield (August 3, 1972). "The Rolling Stones Go South". Rolling Stone. New York, NY: Wenner Media LLC. Retrieved November 24, 2016.