Sing with Me Now: "B.D. Women's Blues" & "Prove It on Me"
In a spacetime where so many of us are being silenced or targeted, it's a great time to bring back the ways folks spoke openly of QTBIPOC desire in the 1920s and 1930s.
In a spacetime where so many of us are being silenced or targeted, it's a great time to bring back the ways folks spoke openly of QTBIPOC desire.
"Queerness traveled in so many ways," as historian Cookie Woolner put it on Our Dyke Histories.
Based on my research, it seems like the blues didn't come across radio waves in any significant force until the 1940s. This is appalling, so straight, so white, so cis. That same group was in charge of radio stuck to jazz – and also pilfered Black jazz musicians work and had white bands replay it. Vile.
Despite the epic overt racism of days of yore – and days of now – there were many, many queer songs on what were known as "race records." While the blues may not have made it to radio airwaves for decades, its sultry notes were rocking in rent parties, buffet flats, boardinghouse shindigs, living rooms, and bedrooms across the U.S. and beyond from the moment they were printed. I'll soon be profiling the brilliant Cookie Woolner's The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall. You can still listen too:
Drawing on the ever magical Queer Music Heritage site, encyclopedic wisdom in earnest 2010 web designs, as well Cookie Woolner's awesome book, here's a smattering of queer blues+ from the 1920s and 1930s.
Here are two of my favorites. 😏
B.D. Women's Blues
One of my favorite songs is "B.D. Women's Blues" by Bessie Jackson, AKA Lucille Bogan. BD stands for bulldyker or bulldagger, a slang and sometimes offensive term, depending on who is using it because it is often reclaimed by the queer community. The term likely developed in early 20th-century African American communities to describe masc and/or butch dykes. I'm including the lyrics to "B.D. Women's Blues" because this old recording can be difficult to understand.
Coming a time, B.D. women ain't gon' need no men
Coming a time, B.D. women's ain't gon' to need no men
Oh, the way treat us is a lowdown and dirty sinB.D. women, you sure can't understand
B.D. women, you sure can't understand
They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural manB.D. women, they all done learnt their plan
B.D. women, they all done learnt their plan
They can lay their jive just like a natural manB.D. women, B.D. women, you know they sure is rough
B.D. women, B.D. women, you know they sure is roughThey all drink up plenty whiskey and they sure will strut their stuff
B.D. women, you know they work and make their dough
B.D. women, you know they work and make their dough
And when they get ready to spend it, they know they have to go
Prove It on Me
The "Mother of the Blues" Ma Rainey may have recorded this truly queer ditty, and one of the queerest songs in the history of English-speaking music: "Prove It on Me." Both the advertisement for the piece and the lyrics "teased audiences with the possibility of Rainey’s desires for women," as Woolner put it. This is a rare sort of pitch though! Still, the "race record" labels sought to keep Black queer women's very gay lives hidden from the larger public.
Woolner writes, "While some historical accounts of Rainey suggest that she took advantage of the rumor of her Chicago arrest by writing this song about the topic of queer desire, in the rumor she did indeed get caught, unlike in her song. To write a song in which she got “caught in the act” would not allow for the ambiguity that Rainey favors here, in which she hints at a taboo subject only to dance around the issue of whether she actually took part in queer behavior. The line “Makes the wind blow all the while” referred to the rumors swirling around her, implying that she enjoyed being in the center of them. However, this line replaced the original lyric Rainey wrote, “Likes to watch while the women pass by,” which was a much more blatantly queer phrase describing active female desire for other women."
Woolner also gives us insights into bulldaggers of the time in Black queer circles, especially in Harlem where many of these artists lived: "The song 'Prove It on Me Blues' is representative of a time when the image of the mannish lesbian, or the 'bulldagger,' was becoming more visible in American culture, which is further demonstrated by examining the print advertisement that helped promote the song in the Black press. The image ignores the joy Rainey expressed in her song and instead depicts her desires as suspect and deviant.
Went out last night, had a great big fight
Everything seemed to go on wrong
I looked up, to my surprise
The gal I was with was gone
Where she went, I don't know
I mean to follow everywhere she goes
Folks said I'm crooked, I didn't know where she took it
I want the whole world to know
They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends
They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men
It's true, I wear a collar and a tie
Makes the wind blow all the while
Don't you say I do it, ain't nobody caught me
You sure got to prove it on me
Say I do it, ain't nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me
I went out last night with a crowd of my friends
It must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men
Wear my clothes just like a fan
Talk to the gals just like any old man
'Cause they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me
Happy listening!!
