Vance Randolph was virtually the only major American collector to collect bawdy songs indiscriminately along with proper ones.

In his edition of Randolph's bawdry, Legman estimates that about 15% of the songs R collected were "unprintable" by standards that didn't really relax until Ed Cray's "The Erotic Muse" appeared in 1969. (And he isn't talking about obscure metaphors like "nightingales," either.)

Randolph collected from 1917-1954, almost exclusively in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri, from informants of all ages. Just how typical that 15% estimate may be of the bawdy content of traditional songs in other regions, in America and elsewhere, is apparently anyone's guess.