‘DIRTY’ LYRICS AREN’T SO NEW

The current flap over sexually explicit lyrics in rock music is nothing new to Hank Ballard.

More than 30 years ago, Ballard found himself in a similar mess when his racy rhythm-and-blues dance hits like “Work With Me, Annie,” “Annie Had a Baby” and “Sexy Ways” were being banned all over the country.

“I was just a teen-ager, writing what I felt and at the same time having fun making words rhyme,” said Ballard, now 51, who since 1982 has been leading his group, the Midnighters, along a comeback trail that includes a stop tonight at the Halcyon nightclub in Point Loma.

“The first song I wrote, back in 1953, was called ‘Get It,’ ” Ballard said. “When it sold 250,000 copies, the stockholders of my record company, King Records, told me to keep writing dirty songs because there was obviously a market for them.

“So that’s what I did. It was never my intention to create all that controversy; I just wrote the kind of songs that the kids wanted to hear.”

By today’s standards, Ballard’s “dirty” lyrics will seem remarkably tame to some. On “Annie Had a Baby,” the objectionable line was “Now I know and it’s understood/That’s what happens when the going gets good.”

“At the time, I didn’t see anything dirty about what I was doing,” Ballard said. “Still, I don’t write lyrics like that anymore. I let people like Prince and the Rolling Stones write stuff like that.

“And you know what? They’re nastier than I ever was. But the whole moral climate is different today. In the 1950s, we were almost back in the Victorian days.

“So looking back, it took a lot of guts for my record company to even put out records like that.”

As is usually the case, that initial bout with controversy helped rather than hindered the fledgling career of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. Half a dozen of their early hits, which combined sexually explicit lyrics with gritty gospel rhythms, peppered the national rhythm-and-blues charts during 1953 and 1954.

In 1958, Ballard wrote a song called “The Twist,” which two years later became a monster hit for Chubby Checker and subsequently inspired an international dance craze.

Throughout the early 1960s, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters continued to crown the pop charts with a mix of soul-scarring ballads and sweltering dance tunes, including “Teardrops,” “Finger Poppin’ Time” and “Thrill on a Hill (Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go).”

But when the Beatles kicked off the British Invasion in 1964, Ballard and countless other American rock acts began finding the pop charts increasingly difficult to penetrate.

“The Beatles put an end to everybody who wasn’t English,” Ballard said. “They even slowed down Elvis Presley.”

Despite the absence of any further hits, Ballard kept the Midnighters more or less intact until the middle 1970s, when he finally decided to quit touring and concentrate on songwriting.

“I spent most of the next seven years in the studio, trying to write another hit record,” Ballard said. “I was working here and there, but I didn’t have my group together.

“Then, in 1982, people started getting enthusiastic about the music of the 1950s again, and that made me round up Billy Davis, my guitarist since 1958, and hit the road with a new band.”

Since then, Ballard said, he and the new Midnighters have been touring an average of 30 weeks a year. Two years ago, their fortunes took a decided upswing when Charly Records, an English label based in London, released a “greatest hits” package that won Goldmine magazine’s award as the best rhythm-and-blues reissue of 1985.

Ballard was subsequently asked to sing a duet with Tim Hauser on the Manhattan Transfer singer’s upcoming solo album. He also took part in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s recent bash at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he and Chubby Checker teamed up to sing “The Twist.”

Last month, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters flew to England for a concert at the Hammersmith Palais in London--their first performance ever outside of the United States. Charly Records taped the show for a live album scheduled for spring release.

Also coming out in spring is Ballard’s first album of new material in more than a decade, this one on Classic Records, a nationally distributed American label.

“It’s going to be hard rock,” Ballard said excitedly. “You’re going to be shocked when you hear my hard-rock saxophone, but this is the direction I think I should take.

“The reason I was gone for so many years is that I had nothing to offer, and when that happens, I would really rather not go out there and perform.

“But now I do, and I’m more excited than I’ve been in years. I love to entertain people. To see people dancing to my music--that’s my greatest high.”