“Aint No Sin To Take Off Your Skin…” (from The Black Rider)

“When you hear sweet syncopation and the music softly moans/‘t ain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones/When it gets too hot for comfort, and you can’t get an ice-cream cone/t’ain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones/Just like those bamboo babies, down in the South Sea tropic zone/ t’aint no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.”

William Burroughs, Robert Wilson and Tom Waits‘ remarkable collaborative work –The Black Rider – The Casting of the Magic Bullets, a so-called “musical fable”, first performed in 1990 in Hamburg, Germany, was an extraordinary and legendary theatrical event. Burroughs wrote the book (the libretti), Waits, the music and most of the lyrics, and Wilson was responsible for design and overall direction.

Waits’ 1993 album, The Black Rider, features Burroughs’ rendition (of ‘Taint No Sin..’)

Here’s George Olsen‘s 1929 recording (“vocal refrain” by Dick Gardner)

Here‘s the delightfully-named Billy Milton and The Four Bright Sparks doing their (very English) version.

Here‘s a female voice (Lee Morse) singing it