Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: So this episode is very dirty. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: most of the episodes are dirty, but this one has
Speaker 2: a lot of very explicit language used in it. And
Speaker 2: so this is just a fair warning to you know,
Speaker 2: probably don't listen to this in front of a small
Speaker 2: child or at work unless you have a cool job.
Speaker 1: But let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to American Filth, Hey filth heads, and Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: To really get.
Speaker 2: You in the mood for today, you know, this day
Speaker 2: of love and sensuality and love making. I'm going to
Speaker 2: read you some lyrics. I'm going to do it in
Speaker 2: a very dramatic, poetic sort of way. All right, here
Speaker 2: are the lyrics. I got nipples on my titties big
Speaker 2: as the end of my thumb. I got something between
Speaker 2: my legs that I'll make a dead man come. Oh daddy, baby, won't.
Speaker 1: You shave him dry? Now?
Speaker 2: Draw it out? Want you to grind me, baby, grind
Speaker 2: me until I cry. This is from a song that
Speaker 2: came out almost ninety years ago in nineteen thirty five
Speaker 2: called a Shave Them Dry. And let me tell you
Speaker 2: this was not the only song like this that came
Speaker 2: out in the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties. There
Speaker 2: are some folks saying some nasty shit, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: learn about it today. Cue the theme song. This is
Speaker 2: American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell
Speaker 2: you a filthy story from American history in today's episode.
Speaker 1: The Dirty, Dirty Blues.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that song that we heard was called Shave
Speaker 2: Him Dry, and it was recorded by Lucille Bogan under
Speaker 2: her pseudonym Bessie Jackson. And the funny thing about those
Speaker 2: is those are just the opening lines of the song,
Speaker 2: you know, like she doesn't even warm you up or
Speaker 2: like ease you into it. And in the context of
Speaker 2: this X ray song, it's probably just about getting right
Speaker 2: to the banging without bothering with all that pesky for play.
Speaker 2: And some of y'all might be thinking, right now, Wow, Gabby,
Speaker 2: it's so fun to hear you recite these lyrics in
Speaker 2: a very poetic, dramatic sort of way.
Speaker 1: But why don't you just play the song. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing.
Speaker 2: Songs require licensing, which requires money, and I just can't
Speaker 2: afford it right now. But I do encourage you go
Speaker 2: listen to Lucille Bogan, Go listen to her music, it's
Speaker 2: freaking fantastic. In the meantime, though, let's hear some other
Speaker 2: lyrics from Shave Them Dry. Say I fuck all night
Speaker 2: and all the night before baby, and how I feel
Speaker 2: just like I wanna fuck some more. And here's another
Speaker 2: excerpt from the song. Now it fucking was the thing
Speaker 2: that would take me to heaven. I'd be fucking in
Speaker 2: the studio till the clock strike eleven. Do you guys
Speaker 2: remember when uh wop came out and all these conservatives
Speaker 2: were in a tizzy over the lyrics, Well, imagine if
Speaker 2: they had heard Lucille Bogan singing this in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 2: Another song that Bogan wrote was called Till the Cows
Speaker 2: Come Home, and it is just as vulgar in its lyrics.
Speaker 2: The general premise of the song is that Bogan can
Speaker 2: fuck until the cows come home. The song opens with
Speaker 2: Bogan saying that every time she bangs a man, she
Speaker 2: gives them quote the dogone clap, And here she does
Speaker 2: not mean the std what she actually means, as she
Speaker 2: explains in the song.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of pussy that they really like. So
Speaker 1: that's a good one.
Speaker 2: You guys could use tonight for Valentine's Day. You know,
Speaker 2: you'd be like, hey, partner or hey random person, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna give you the clap tonight, and they'll be like,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about, Like I don't want the clap.
Speaker 2: It's like no, it's like you're gonna clap for it.
Speaker 2: You're gonna give it a standing ovation. Anyway, Later in
Speaker 2: that song, she says, if you suck my pussy, baby,
Speaker 2: I'll suck your dick. I'll do it ya, honey till
Speaker 2: I make you shit. Oh baby, honey, do it all
Speaker 2: night long. Do it to me, Papa till tomorrow comes. Look,
Speaker 2: even tomorrow is coming. In these lyrics amazing and I
Speaker 2: really respect this because Bogan is not even doing innuendo.
Speaker 2: She's just going for it, crooning about how much she
Speaker 2: loves sex so much that I'll make her partner shit.
Speaker 2: So Lucille Bogan, she's considered the Queen of the Dirty Blues,
Speaker 2: but these were just a few of the many, many,
Speaker 2: many songs.
Speaker 1: That she wrote and recorded.
Speaker 2: So who is this lady just brazenly singing about boning
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties. Well, she was born Lucille Anderson
Speaker 2: just before the turn of the Century on April first,
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety seven, and there are conflicting records about where
Speaker 2: she was born. It was either Mississippi or Alabama. And
Speaker 2: there's really not a whole lot known about her early years.
Speaker 2: But when she was seventeen, she married this guy named
Speaker 2: Nazareth Lee Bogan. He was a railway man who already
Speaker 2: had a daughter. But a year or two into their marriage,
Speaker 2: she gave birth to a son of her own. She
Speaker 2: and Nazareth later divorced and she remarried, but she kept
Speaker 2: Bogan as her name, and what is known about her
Speaker 2: life is mostly about her career as a singer. She's
Speaker 2: among the first blues musicians to ever be recorded, alongside
Speaker 2: legends like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. The first tunes
Speaker 2: Bogan laid on wax were actually vaudeville songs that she
Speaker 2: recorded in New York in nineteen twenty three, and she
Speaker 2: did this with Okay Records. Later that same year, Bogan
Speaker 2: made music history when Okay's Ralph Pierre came down to
Speaker 2: the South to record a country, blues, jazz and gospel
Speaker 2: artists in a converted warehouse in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: On this trip.
Speaker 2: Not only did Pierre record country music's first genuine hit
Speaker 2: by Fidland John Carson, but this session made Bogan the
Speaker 2: first black blues singer to be recorded outside of the
Speaker 2: big cities of New York in Chicago. And here's a
Speaker 2: very fun fact. The building where they recorded this music
Speaker 2: where a very significant moment in music history took place.
Speaker 2: It was actually torn down a few years ago to
Speaker 2: make room for something even more important, a Margaritaville. Ha
Speaker 2: ha ha.
Speaker 1: History's dumb, don't preserve it anyway.
Speaker 2: While coming up in the music scene in the twenties,
Speaker 2: Bogan is also hanging out and performing in some pretty
Speaker 2: seedy juke joints, and these kinds of places, well, they
Speaker 2: welcome the dirty, nasty lyrics Bogan became known for. So
Speaker 2: heading into the nineteen thirties, a lot of the stuff
Speaker 2: that Bogan's writing start to take on filthy, risky topics
Speaker 2: like drinking and sex and prostitution. You know, she has
Speaker 2: that song Till the Cows Come Home, but she has
Speaker 2: other ones called Sloppy Drunk Blues and tricks Ain't walkin
Speaker 2: no More. And the thing about Bogan is that over
Speaker 2: the years she was known to have affairs with both
Speaker 2: men and women. Wow, a bisexual queen and her queerness
Speaker 2: starts being reflected in her music. Like she has this
Speaker 2: one song called b D Woman's Blues, and that b
Speaker 2: D apparently stands for either bull dagger or bull dyke,
Speaker 2: both terms that mean butch lesbian.
Speaker 1: And here's this.
Speaker 2: Song coming a time. Beady women ain't gonna need no men,
Speaker 2: coming a time. Beady women ain't gonna need no men.
Speaker 2: Oh the way treat us as a low down and
Speaker 2: dirty sin. Beaty women, you sure can't understand. Beaty women,
Speaker 2: you sure can't understand. They got a head like a
Speaker 2: sweet angel, and they walk just like a natural man.
Speaker 2: While it may seem that Bogan's just a smutty outlier here,
Speaker 2: she's actually not alone. There's a whole cohort of blues
Speaker 2: singers who were known for being sexually adventurous. I mean,
Speaker 2: if we're talking about women and sexuality and being pretty
Speaker 2: bold with your lyrics, we can't leave out Maul Rainey,
Speaker 2: the mother of the blues. You know, she also, like Bogan,
Speaker 2: bridged vaudeville and the blues, connecting this new musical style
Speaker 2: to the earlier sexualized space of the vaudeville houses. I mean,
Speaker 2: just imagine that there was provocative dancing and suggestive singing.
Speaker 1: That was just part of it.
Speaker 2: And the thing about mal Rainy is, you know, her sexuality.
Speaker 2: Some people think she could have been bisexual. Maybe she
Speaker 2: was a lesbian. She took on many female lovers despite
Speaker 2: being married to a man. There was even rumors that
Speaker 2: she had some kind of sexual or romantic relationship with
Speaker 2: fellow musician and her protege, Bessie Smith. Yeah, Ma Raini,
Speaker 2: she definitely loved women like In nineteen twenty five, the
Speaker 2: Chicago police arrested her at her home for hosting a
Speaker 2: so called lesbian party. It's records like this arrest that
Speaker 2: helped support theories that a number of Malrainy songs allude
Speaker 2: to her lesbian leanings, like these famous lines in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty eight's Prove It on Me Blues. I went out
Speaker 2: last night with a crowd of my friends. It must
Speaker 2: have been women, because I don't like no men. Wear
Speaker 2: my clothes just like a fan, talk to the gals
Speaker 2: just like any old man. And a few years earlier,
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty four, Ma Rainey recorded another song that
Speaker 2: hence at her queerness. In the lyrics, she describes a
Speaker 2: woman who is wearing men's shoes, and at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, there were men's shoes and most women wouldn't
Speaker 2: be caught dead in them unless she was a cross
Speaker 2: dressing or be gay. And that nineteen twenty four song
Speaker 2: that was also Shave Em Dry Blues, that's right, Lucille
Speaker 2: Bogan's infinous nineteen thirty five recording was actually a modified cover,
Speaker 2: or at least inspired by Ma Rainey's tune from more
Speaker 2: than a decade earlier. And actually, on that day, March fifth,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, Bogan recorded two versions of Shave Them Dry.
Speaker 2: There's the super vulgar one you heard earlier, and then
Speaker 2: there's a cleaned up version that is way more tame
Speaker 2: and marketable. And that cleaned up version was the song
Speaker 2: released and distributed by Bogan's record label, The Banner, labeled
Speaker 2: of the American Record Corporation. And believe it or not,
Speaker 2: these naughty, slightly suggestive tunes weren't just some random dirty
Speaker 2: songs that slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2: There was actually a whole genre of sexually suggestive, if
Speaker 2: not outright explicit blues music that actually, despite its erotic
Speaker 2: subject matter, held broad commercial appeal. It was called hocum blues.
Speaker 2: More on that after the soothing advertisements. Welcome back from
Speaker 2: the soothing advertisements. I'm going to introduce a new person.
Speaker 2: His name is Thomas A. Dorsey. These days, he's known
Speaker 2: as the father of gospel music, and he's inducted into
Speaker 2: both the Songwriters and the Gospel Hall of Fame. He's
Speaker 2: been recorded and covered by musicians like bb King to
Speaker 2: Little Richard, to Aretha Franklin, even Elvis Presley. And that's
Speaker 2: not necessarily because of his long career in gospel music.
Speaker 1: No No. Back in the late nineteen twenties, Thomas A.
Speaker 2: Dorsey was known as Georgia Tom and he was a
Speaker 2: pioneer of the genre known as hokum blues. And by
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, by the way, Dorsey was a well
Speaker 2: established performer. He was born in Villa Rica, Georgia, but
Speaker 2: his family moved to Atlanta when he was a child.
Speaker 2: There he began working part time at a local theater,
Speaker 2: which is where he learned to play the piano. According
Speaker 2: to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, by the time Dorsey
Speaker 2: was twelve, he was performing at the barrel houses in
Speaker 2: Brothels of Atlanta's Decatur Street. Some years later he moved
Speaker 2: to Chicago and it was there that he served for
Speaker 2: at least some time as none other than Ma Rainey's bandleader.
Speaker 2: He was also a piano player, a ranger, and vocal
Speaker 2: coach at Paramount Records. He just dove headfirst into Chicago's
Speaker 2: music scene. Then he meets a guy named Hudson Whittaker
Speaker 2: who went by the name of Tampa Red. He was
Speaker 2: a musician who played parties and did some street performing
Speaker 2: for money, and the two of them started playing together.
Speaker 2: While classic blue singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey
Speaker 2: performed at the vaudeville houses, the majority of blues musicians
Speaker 2: at the time tended to perform at late night spots
Speaker 2: like speakeasies, after hours cafes, and parties. And this was
Speaker 2: pretty cool, but according to Dorsey, it was actually possible
Speaker 2: to make a living performing at these parties. You know,
Speaker 2: when one party ended, the musicians could move on to
Speaker 2: the next gathering and just keep going. A lot of
Speaker 2: these places they offered pretty low rents to the people
Speaker 2: who were moving to the major cities every week. A
Speaker 2: lot of the people moving were black Southerners who were
Speaker 2: fleeing the Jim Crow South. This is part of what
Speaker 2: would come to be known as the Great Migration. And
Speaker 2: so since you had all of these black Southerners moving
Speaker 2: up north, there was a desire for some Southern type music.
Speaker 1: You know. So at these parties, the music.
Speaker 2: That people wanted to hear was stuff that you might
Speaker 2: hear at a weekend shin dig in the South. So
Speaker 2: this music came to be known as city blues.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was something you could dance to, but it also
Speaker 2: had very lol lyrics. And the thing is, you might
Speaker 2: be wondering, Oh, I didn't think that in the rural South,
Speaker 2: in the countryside, that people would be singing suggestive songs.
Speaker 2: But apparently people had been doing that for a long time,
Speaker 2: in fact, more than a decade before Ma Rainey came
Speaker 2: up with shaveam Dry. In nineteen twelve. Black vaudeville performer
Speaker 2: Paul Carter put it this way to a news publication.
Speaker 2: He said, smutty sayings and suggestive dancing were already common
Speaker 2: in black vaudeville, and the audiences loved things with a
Speaker 2: double meaning.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this.
Speaker 2: Raunchy art form was already very popular and tons of
Speaker 2: fun and at night, with lots of drinking and dancing,
Speaker 2: it made sense to have some smut and vulgarity. But
Speaker 2: certainly this wasn't something you would record and distribute for money.
Speaker 1: Right, No, wrong, because now in.
Speaker 2: The twentieth century, with the growth of the music industry,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people who were hungry to
Speaker 2: record music, particularly like when Ralph Pierre came down to Atlanta,
Speaker 2: he was really focused on what was then known as
Speaker 2: race records or in general black music. And then when
Speaker 2: we got to the nineteen twenties, people had record players
Speaker 2: and this boosted the popularity of genres like jazz, blues
Speaker 2: and what was then called hillbilly music what we'd call
Speaker 2: country today. So you know, some of these record producers
Speaker 2: they had this idea. They're like, well, if we take
Speaker 2: the city blues songs that are so popular, take out
Speaker 2: some of the inappropriate words, maybe have even more secure innuendos, voila,
Speaker 2: then we can make a hit, which brings us back
Speaker 2: to Dorsey and Whittaker in nineteen twenty eight. The two
Speaker 2: of them were trying to make a hit song, but
Speaker 2: Unfortunately they were having some writer's block. But then one
Speaker 2: day they're just hanging out and inspiration strikes. Basically what
Speaker 2: happened is that they were just sitting around trying to
Speaker 2: think up a song, and then a boy comes by
Speaker 2: and he's like, hey, everybody in the street is saying
Speaker 2: it's tight like that. Maybe you should make a song
Speaker 2: about that. And then Dorsey and Whitaker were like, that's
Speaker 2: a great idea. So they wrote a song called It's
Speaker 2: Tight Like That. Whittaker wrote the lyrics and Dorsey was
Speaker 2: in charge of the tune. And yes, the tune is
Speaker 2: very similar to this nineteen twenty five song called Shake
Speaker 2: that Thing by Papa Charlie Jackson.
Speaker 1: But whatever that was a hit.
Speaker 2: Dorsey made some tweaks whatever, and so in Tight Like That,
Speaker 2: the lyrics are suggestive, but not necessarily outright dirty, filthy gross.
Speaker 2: They actually use a lot of slang used by black
Speaker 2: people at the time, so they never directly said any
Speaker 2: of the bad words taboo topics. One term that you
Speaker 2: might hear at a late night dance club was beatle
Speaker 2: um bum, which Dorsey explained was a suggestive phrase that
Speaker 2: women would sing while dancing with their dudes.
Speaker 1: The lyrics are.
Speaker 2: Uncle Bill came home about half past ten, put the
Speaker 2: key in the hole, but he couldn't get in. Oh
Speaker 2: it's tight like that.
Speaker 1: Hmm, what could that mean?
Speaker 2: Beat up bum bum? Oh it's tight like that beatle
Speaker 2: um bum you hear me talking to you.
Speaker 1: I mean it's tight like that.
Speaker 2: So, you know, suggestive but not explicit, And as many
Speaker 2: songs in the hok and blues genre would do later,
Speaker 2: you could further modify it, like you could also just
Speaker 2: like not say tight instead. Sometimes it would be replaced
Speaker 2: with it or that thing, And so people who were
Speaker 2: listening to it, if they weren't good at like innuendo
Speaker 2: or didn't know the words, you couldn't be offended, like
Speaker 2: maybe in the song, you know, the key was just
Speaker 2: literally too fat for that lock. I don't know, And
Speaker 2: it's tight like that became a huge hit. By nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine, five hundred thousand records had been sold. The
Speaker 2: Songwriters Hall of Fame thinks that the song ultimately sold
Speaker 2: seven million recordings, which was a record for the blues era,
Speaker 2: and also Whittaker and Dorsey kept recording new versions with
Speaker 2: different lyrics or a new band name, like they did
Speaker 2: one version that they recorded with a jug band, and
Speaker 2: they called it Tampa Red's Hocum Jug Band. And as
Speaker 2: for the word hokum, they included it because of the
Speaker 2: words of roots in vaudeville, it was already a term
Speaker 2: used to describe a show or performance that bordered on vulgarity,
Speaker 2: sort of a lowke metic style like double entendre. This
Speaker 2: basically let their audience, at least the ones who were
Speaker 2: in the know, understand what.
Speaker 1: They were really getting at.
Speaker 2: And unsurprisingly, because of this song's success, other groups began
Speaker 2: recording covers of its tight like that, or just ripped
Speaker 2: the song off completely, and it was so popular that
Speaker 2: people were eating this shit up.
Speaker 1: They're like, yes, give me more, it's tight like that.
Speaker 2: Like even preachers recorded sermons that had similar names.
Speaker 1: Like this is crazy, But there was a dude who had.
Speaker 2: A sermon that was called these hard Times are tight
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: So the popularity.
Speaker 2: Of this song and others led to a rush of
Speaker 2: hocum blues hits in the twenties and thirties that had
Speaker 2: some really excellent titles like what is It that Tastes
Speaker 2: Like Gravy by Whittaker or Meatballs by Lil Johnson, our
Speaker 2: Bo Carter's Please Warm My Wiener.
Speaker 1: That last one not super subtle.
Speaker 2: And while a lot of people love these songs, a
Speaker 2: lot of people hated them. A lot of the criticism
Speaker 2: was aimed at the record companies. Like the famed ethnomusicologist
Speaker 2: Alan Lomax was like, Ah, the record companies quote encouraged
Speaker 2: their singers to produce cheap novelty blues, the sillier the better,
Speaker 2: which in his eyes, overshadowed quote the poignant and often
Speaker 2: profound poetry of the earlier country blues.
Speaker 1: But I think this is dumb.
Speaker 2: Because obviously vulgar and racy songs can be poetic and
Speaker 2: have meaning.
Speaker 1: Okay, these were very clever songs.
Speaker 2: Also, his criticism of the record companies takes away the
Speaker 2: agency of the black artists who were making the songs.
Speaker 2: Like the Hoke and Blues and these like dirty blues tunes.
Speaker 2: They were very subversive, you know, it was going against
Speaker 2: the white establishment that expected black people to behave a
Speaker 2: certain way stupid in low Max. And it's also kind
Speaker 2: of funny because like Thomas Dorsey, who wrote some of
Speaker 2: these dirty songs, he was actually a Baptist and in
Speaker 2: the twenties. While writing these popular blues tracks, he was
Speaker 2: also becoming involved in music of the church. He coined
Speaker 2: the term gospel music and would sell sheet music with
Speaker 2: gospel songs he had written.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately this is really sad. But in the nineteen.
Speaker 2: Thirties, his wife and his child died within twenty four
Speaker 2: hours of each other. That inspired him to write his
Speaker 2: most famous gospel song, which is take my Hand, Precious Lord.
Speaker 2: And in the decades after he became an influential music
Speaker 2: publisher and would eventually be recognized as the father of
Speaker 2: gospel music. And now Lucille Bogan's legacy, though it's taken
Speaker 2: a longer time to acknowledge, and maybe that's because her
Speaker 2: music wasn't as marketable, kind of like this show you
Speaker 2: know another one of her songs.
Speaker 1: Here are the lyrics.
Speaker 2: I told him, I got a cock, and it's got
Speaker 2: four damn good names.
Speaker 1: Rough top, rough cock, tough cock, cock.
Speaker 2: Without a bone. You can fuck my cock, suck my cock,
Speaker 2: or leave my cock alone. But also it might have
Speaker 2: taken longer to recognize her because when she first started
Speaker 2: recording it was under her real name, Lucille Bogan, But
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty three, when she went to New York.
Speaker 2: She began recording as Bessie Jackson, and she managed to
Speaker 2: lay down over one hundred tracks of just two years.
Speaker 2: And it was in nineteen thirty five, during her final
Speaker 2: recording session that she recorded Till the Cows Come Home
Speaker 2: and those two takes of Shave Them Dry. Unfortunately, ARC
Speaker 2: didn't renew her contract, so she didn't record anymore after that.
Speaker 1: She died in August nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 2: Even though she never achieved the name recognition that she deserves,
Speaker 2: we got to appreciate her body blues. So at the
Speaker 2: end of this episode, to really put you in the
Speaker 2: mood for Valentine's Day, let's have another reading of her lyrics.
Speaker 2: Now your nuts hang down like a damn bell sapper,
Speaker 2: and your dick stands up like a steeple, your goddamn
Speaker 2: asshole stands open like a church door, and the crabs
Speaker 2: walk in like people haw shit shucks ooh. And as
Speaker 2: always we learn a lesson from American filth, and I
Speaker 2: think the lesson we learned today is that throughout the century,
Speaker 2: throughout the years, people want to fuck all right. Happy
Speaker 2: Valentine's Day everyone, American Field is a production of School
Speaker 2: of Humans and iHeart Podcast. I'm Gabby Watts. This episode
Speaker 2: was written by Amelia Brock. She's also the senior producer.
Speaker 2: Ore executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr.
Speaker 2: You can follow the podcast on Instagram at American Felt Pod.
Speaker 1: Theme song is also by me and Jesse Niswanger. Please
Speaker 1: leave review give it five stars. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: have a good day. Have you all find say
Speaker 2: Bye School of Humans.