Artist	Song
Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs	Little Red Riding Hood
The Beatles	Little Child
Mink Deville	Little Girl
Amy Studt	Just a Little Girl
Ten Years After	Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
Lenny Kravitz	Little Girl's Eyes
The Doors	My Eyes Have Seen You
The Beatles	I Want You (She's So Heavy)
John Lee Hooker	Let Your Daddy Ride
Madonna	Like a Virgin
Marilyn Monroe	My Heart Belongs to Daddy
Mott the Hoople	Momma's Little Jewel
Sarah Vaughn	Whatever Lola Wants
Ray Charles	This Little Girl of Mine
The Osmonds	Go Away Little Girl
Gary Puckett & the Union Gap	Young Girl
The Beatles	Run for Your Life
The Doors	You're Lost Little Girl
John Mayall & the Blues Breakers	Little Girl

Comment:

Humbert & Lo

About the same time my copy of Lolita (annotated, thank heavens!) finally beckoned me to take her off the shelf for a re-read, I had acquired the Ten Years After Ssssh cd. Seeing Good Morning Little Schoolgirl on the play list, and allowing the red cover to bring to mind the old Sam the Sham tune, the mix had to be done.

In his book, Nabokov defines a "nymphet" as a young girl, ideally between the ages of 12 and 14 (but can be as young as 9), that displays a semi-conscious sexual precocity, a special combination of innocence, vulgarity, and awareness.

Quoting Humbert Humbert, Nabokov's late 30's-ish protagonist and professorial nympholept, whose first person narrative is used to write the novel in journal form:

"In fact, I would have the reader see "nine" and "fourteen" as the boundaries-the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks-of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea. Between those age limits, are all girl-children nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who are in the know, we long voyagers, we nympholepts, would have long gone insane. Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity, or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such coevals of hers as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where Lolita plays with her likes."

"You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs-the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate-the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power."

And so go Humbert's pathetic predilection and consequent actions, coupled with his quite humorous intellectual vantage point. Nabokov's lack of sympathy for Humbert might be indicated by changing the spelling and pronunciation on Lolita's given name, Dolores Haze. Humbert does seem to be lost in a dolorous haze for the duration of the novel.

The tie-in to rock and roll (and certainly the blues) is this: the theme of male predation of girls younger than the age of consent. I would appreciate it if you would add your insights, comments, and other possible additions to the mix. There must be a wealth of blues and rock & roll songs focusing on this topic that are not familiar to me.

Many of the tunes on the mix merely mention a "little girl" or "little child", both (like "baby") well understood euphemisms for a girlfriend or lover. The themes on a couple of the songs openly express the desire for underage females. Certainly Alvin Lee shouts it at the top of his lungs for about 7 minutes.

Some of the songs are expressions of Humbert's introduction to and obsession with Lolita, such as the My Eyes Have Seen You, the follow-up I Want You (She's So Heavy) and the kicker, Let Your Daddy Ride. Plus the TYA cut, or course.

Lolita gets her say in the Amy Studt, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe (actually introducing herself as Lolita!), and Sarah Vaughn tracks.

Back to Humbert with conflicting emotions expressed in the Osmonds through Beatles tracks, and closing with the final two tracks; possibly expressed by Clare Quilty, Humbert's shadowy doppelganger and adversarial suitor for Lolita's companionship. Enjoy the mix!

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