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Your grandparents have something they’d like to tell you. In fact, your great-grandparents do too. Sure, they might seem like the very pillars of grace and virtue and good moral standing now, but just listen to the lyrics of this song and then try and work out how they can possibly be offended by half the stuff that gets ‘Parental Advisory’  stickers now. Lucille Bogan was dropping F-bombs all over the place back in the 1930s!

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Lucille Bogan began her career singing vaudeville songs for Okeh Records in 1923, but by 1930 her songs had lyrics far more concerned with sex and boozing. She started recording as Bessie Jackson in 1933, recording some more straight-forward blues songs with pianist Walter Roland, but amongst her last recordings with him in 1935 was this exquisitely filthy version of ‘Shave ‘Em Dry’. I think it’s time to show you some sample lyrics, so here you go, including the bit that the Rolling Stones borrowed for ‘Start Me Up’:
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“I got nipples on my titties big as the end of my thumb,
I got somethin’ ‘tween my legs ‘ll make a dead man come,
Oooh daddy-baby, won’t you shave ‘em dry, oooh!
Won’t you grind me baby, grind me till I cry.”

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Now is that really the kind of language that you’d expect from someone who looks like they could’ve hung out with your grandma? I think not.

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Lucille Bogan: The Lil’ Kim of the 1930s. Legend. And, if you’d like to read on, then check out Cracked’s list of ‘7 Songs From Your Grandpa’s Day That Would Make Eminem Blush’

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KS