Lucille Bogan was an early Blues singer (among the first to be recorded) who used the Pseudonym Bessie Jackson. She was born in Mississippi in 1897 and raised in Alabama. Trained in the rawdier Juke Joints of the 1920s she was primarily accompanied by Walter Roland on piano, with whom she recorded over 50 songs, including
Shave 'Em Dry
Sweet Petunia
Tricks Ain't Walkin' No More
B.D. Woman's Blues
Stew Meat Blues
Honeycomb Man
Mr. Screw Worm In Trouble
Bo Hog Blues
most of which are thinly veiled, humorous sexual euphamisms. Shave 'Em Dry was one recorded on Tuesday, March 5, 1935 for which an alternate take still exists in which she unabashedly sings the lyrics she would normally change for a recording and only sing at adult clubs, leaving what stands (along with the release of Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 Library of Congress recordings for Alan Lomax in which he recorded the typical raunchy repertoire of the Juke Joints of the turn of the century when he developed his skills) as the only record of the sexually explicit content that was as old as the blues itsself.
