Good Morning POU!
We are featuring 2 Nasty Women today, and BOY ARE THEY NASTY!
Lil Johnson (1920s-1930s, dates and places of birth and death unknown) was a singer who recorded dirty blues and hokum songs in the 1920s and 1930s.
Let’s Get Drunk and Truck
Her origins and early life are not known. She first recorded in Chicago in 1929, accompanied by the pianists Montana Taylor and Charles Avery on five songs, including “Rock That Thing”. She did not return to the recording studio until 1935, when her more risqué songs included “Get ‘Em from the Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)”, “Anybody Want to Buy My Cabbage?”, and “Press My Button (Ring My Bell)” (“Come on baby, let’s have some fun / Just put your hot dog in my bun”). She also recorded a version of “Keep A-Knockin’“, which later became a hit for Little Richard.
You Stole My Cherry
Her other songs included “Was I?”, “My Stove’s in Good Condition”, “Take Your Hand Off It” “You’ll Never Miss Your Jelly Till Your Jelly Roller Is Gone” and “Buck Naked Blues”.
She sang in a vigorous and sometimes abrasive manner. All her songs have been anthologized on later blues collections. There is no record of what became of Johnson after her recording career ended in 1937.
Buck Naked Blues
Lucille Bogan (April 1, 1897 – August 10, 1948) was a blues singer, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. The music critic Ernest Borneman stated that Bogan was one of “the big three of the blues”, along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Many of Bogan’s songs have been covered by later blues and jazz musicians, including Buddy Guy, B.B. King, and Sonny Boy Williamson. Many of her songs were sexually explicit and she was generally considered to have been a dirty blues musician.
With her experience in some of the rowdier juke joints of the 1920s, many of Bogan’s songs, most of which she wrote herself, have thinly veiled humorous sexual references. The theme of prostitution, in particular, featured prominently in several of her recordings. One of these was “Groceries on the Shelf (Piggly Wiggly)”, which was originally written and recorded by Charlie “Specks” McFadden. Piggly Wiggly is the name of a successful American supermarket chain, operating in the southern and midwestern regions of the United States, which first opened in 1916. Bogan used the self-service notion in her amended lyrics to the song, part of which ran “My name is Piggly Wiggly and I swear you can help yourself, And you’ve got to have your greenback, and it don’t take nothin’ else”.
One of her final recordings is “Shave’em Dry”. I will just drop those lyrics for you right here:
I got nipples on my titties
Big as the end of my thumb
I got somethin between my legs
That’ll make a dead-man come
Baby won’t you shave ’em dry
Want you to grind me baby
Grind me until I cry
I fucked all night
And the night before, baby
And I feel like I wanna fuck some more
Oh, grind me honey
Shave me dry
And when you hear me holla baby
Want you to shave me dry
I got nipples on my titties
Big as the end of my thumb
Oh, daddy shave me dry
And I’ll give you something baby
Swear it’ll make you dry
I’m gonna turn back my mattress
And let you on my springs
I want you to grind me daddy
Until the bells do ring
Oh baby
Want you to shave me dry
Oh great God daddy, if you can’t shave em baby, won’t you try?
Now if fuckin’ was the thing
That would take me to heaven,
I’d be fuckin’ in the studio
Till the clock strike eleven.
Oh daddy, daddy shave ’em dry,
I would fuck you baby,
Honey I’d make you cry.
Now your nuts hang down
Like a damn bell sapper,
And your dick stands up like a steeple.
Your goddam ass-hole
Stands open like a church door,
And the crabs walks in like people.
Ow, shit!
(Aah, sure enough, shave ’em dry?)
Ooooh! Baby, won’t you shave ’em dry
A big sow gets fat from eatin’ corn,
And a pig gets fat from suckin’.
Reason you see this whore, fat like I am,
Great God, I got fat from fuckin’.
Eeeeh! Shave ’em dry
(Aah, shake it, don’t break it)
My back is made of whalebone,
And my cock is made of brass,
And my fuckin’ is made for workin’ men’s two dollars,
Great God, round to kiss my ass.
Oh! Whoo, daddy, shave ’em dry