The six-part Netflix series “History of Swear Words”… is fantastic.

In one of the episodes, they briefly talked about a blues singer from the early 1930s that I thought I’d check out. Apparently, Lucille Bogon a.k.a. Bessie Jackson, born Lucille Anderson would curse like a sailor in her music.

We have the idea these days that our modern music is really pushing the boundaries of acceptable language and content. And that music from bygone eras was more staid, quaint and wholesome. Even by modern standards, Lucille’s music can be shocking. See here, with 1935’s “Shave ‘Em Dry“…

Did you catch that line about making a dead man cum? Yeah, that might sound familiar to Rolling Stones fans, because they paid homage to that on their 1977 song “Start Me Up” with generally the same line. Flashing back to the 1930s with that one.

Lucille was born in Mississippi in 1897, raised in Alabama. She was married, had a son, divorced and married again. Her recorded music career began with 1920s Vaudeville in New York.

With the 1930s her songs really started to feature sex and drinking, prostitution and promiscuity, homosexuality and more. Many of her songs have later been covered by the greats such as Memphis Minnie, B. B. King, and many others.

By 1935, she seems to have been done recording her own material. She managed her son’s jazz group for a while, then crossed the rainbow bridge in 1948.

Let’s spin up this “Best Of” compilation album and put this woman’s music in your heart and her dirty lyrics in your ear. If you blush, even now in 2021, know that she did that intentionally and with feeling. Check it.