Since time immemorial, human beings have been obsessed with sex. Not just obsessed with doing it, but by writing stories about it, scrawling pornographic graffiti in caves, crafting sculptures of sexual intercourse inside of temples, and composing poetry and songs about it. This should come as no surprise when considering that sex is the most pleasing physical sensation the human body will ever experience. Our ancestors felt that it was worth singing praises to in its honor. The advent of recorded music facilitated its spread across the world, giving humanity the ability to share these songs of sex with others and to store them almost indefinitely.

The first musicians ever to lay sexual themes to wax can be traced all the way back to the Blues, or more specifically, the subgenre called Hokum (or “dirty blues”). These were songs that were deemed taboo and obscene by the standards of the time, full of double entendres and innuendo to disguise the graphic nature of the music. Blues itself (which evolved from traditional African musical styles ) came into existence in the Deep South, sometime during the 1860s. Determining who the first blues singer is a hopeless endeavor, but we do know that the first blues recording was by Sylvester “Curly” Weaver, quickly followed by Papa Charlie Jackson, Daddy Stovepipe, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith; all of whom recorded in the year 1923. W. C. Handy, the self-anointed Father of the Blues, broadened the reach of blues music by having it published. Women were right there with these men from the beginning, but are often left out of the conversation about the creation and growth of the genre as if they had never had anything to do with it. Women were an integral part of the development of the blues and did more for the art form and industry than many people are aware of. The bi-sexual and feminist icon Ma Rainey, anointed Mother of the Blues, played a major role in bringing it to prominence. Women were some of the first blues singers, and would later popularize Handy’s 12-bar blues. The contribution of women in the genre would later influence jazz, rhythm & blues, and rock and roll. They were pioneers in every sense of the word.

When blues began to spread to cities throughout the U.S., its dirty twin was right behind it. Both styles would eventually reach a broader audience, but hokum flourished despite never once having been played on the radio due to the music’s subject matter. Hokum’s bawdy tunes were still relegated to house parties and jukeboxes, frowned upon by “respectable” African Americans who (like jazz and rock and roll ) labeled blues “the devil’s music”. It was associated with drinking, gambling, and womanizing and in the opinion of the religious and conservatives, if the music didn’t praise God, it must be praising the Devil. Apparently, nobody gave a damn, because the bands played on.

There’s a long list of blues legends such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Memphis Minnie, John Lee Hooker, and more. Who you might not be familiar with are the lesser-known hokum musicians who made the aforementioned conservatives in the south clutch their bibles. The list of those artists (legendary or otherwise) is not quite as long as the list of other blues musicians, but they left their mark on African American music and culture just the same. Some of the names on that short list were acts such as Bull Moose Jackson (“I Want a Bowlegged Woman”), Harry Roy (“My Girl’s Pussy”), Bo Carter (“Banana in Your Fruit Basket”), The Midnighters (“Work With Me, Annie”), and The Clovers (“Rotten Cocksuckers’ Ball”). Much like their male counterparts, the women of dirty blues could be just raunchy as (or raunchier than) the men. Here are a few examples.

“I got nipples on my titties, big as my thumb, Got something ‘tween my legs’ll make a dead man come”.

“Shave 'Em Dry” by Lucille Bogan (the dirtiest of dirty blues singers).

"Come on daddy, get down on your knees, Sock it to my weak spot if you please"

“I Crave Your Lovin' Every Day” by Ora Alexander.

"Come on baby, let's have some fun, just put your hot dog in my bun".

"Press My Button (Ring My Bell)" by Lil Johnson.

Other women who sang the dirty blues were:

• Dinah Washington -“Big Long Slidin’ Thing”

• Dorothy Ellis - “Drill Daddy Drill”

• Julia Lee - “King Size Papa”

• Irene Scruggs - "Good Grinding"

Here in the U.S., we’re good for sanitizing the past and romanticizing historical events but there hasn’t been a single decade during the past hundred years when people didn’t talk about how “back in my day”, songs with profanity and sexual themes didn’t exist, but they’re clearly wrong since, in each decade, there were songs just like that, whether or not you could decipher what was being said in the lyrics. The entire so-called “modern” world believes that women have no business wanting to be sexually pleased and in a manner that gives them the most pleasure. Women who make it known to the public through either music or conversation have always been considered to be inappropriate. Had it not been for the stigma many women face when expressing their sexual exploits, interests, and desires, especially in the presence of others, I’m sure that there would have been more women singing the dirty blues.

The blues era waned during the depression years but made a comeback of sorts during the fifties and sixties, by that time, however, rock and roll had become an ostentatious phenomenon, pop was beginning to rule the airwaves, and the blues had all but been forgotten. What’s more, nobody recorded overtly sexually-themed songs anymore, though popular music was full of sexual innuendo. In 1967, Aretha Franklin recorded Otis Redding’s “Respect” and made it a hit (and made it hers). It became an anthem for African American women (and generally American as well) who were tired of being disrespected and mistreated by men. Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” hit the airwaves in 1971, the year after Second-Wave Feminism had begun to rumble and grow. But women still had a long way to go (and still do) and it was no different in the music industry. Regardless of the genre, songs of “love” performed by men have always been patronizing, sexist, and misogynistic. Men have dominated record sales and the airwaves for decades. Women who played musical instruments such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elizabeth Cotten, Heart, and A Taste of Honey were seen as novelties, rather than serious musicians despite the fact that many of them were just as talented or more talented than men. In fact, songs sung by women in those days were mostly written by men (e.g. Donna Summer’s first and biggest hit was “Love to Love You Baby” and was written by Italian musician Giorgio Moroder). Many of these songs were about women pining for men while being accommodating, docile, and loyal (and not much has changed since the birth of popular radio). Nowhere within the music industry were there men not in control of women's careers; from production, promotion, and record sleeve art, the male presence dominated. Few songs spoke about women’s sexual needs in terms that demanded attention and respect (white women, somewhat surprisingly it seemed, abstained from the subject matter altogether).

During the seventies when r&b gave way to soul music, there were a handful of women singers who recorded songs of love and sex that were perhaps bolder than most songs of that era such as Chaka Khan, LaBelle, Sylvia Robinson, and Grace Jones. The only singer to not give a fuck was Betty Davis, the funk singer, and fashion model. Carlos Santana said that she couldn't be "tamed", and Miles Davis (to whom she had been married for a year) remarked that she was "too young and wild" after they had divorced. Radio stations wouldn't play her music due to her sexually-charged lyrics and pressure from the NAACP. Her unabashed sexual songs and performances were too much for mainstream radio and television (the latter of which she had been banned from). Even Millie Jackson paled in comparison to Betty’s raunch.

Still, there were no more songs in any genre (even rock and roll) that would come anywhere close to the kinds of music found in Hokum songs. Betty Davis couldn’t make it in music even though her songs didn’t use explicit sexual language. Nobody was prepared to hear that level of crude on the radio, and Betty never achieved the kind of fame her contemporary counterparts enjoyed.

Hip-Hop, however, would be the first musical genre to put women’s carnal desires and sexual larks front and center for the first time since the days of the dirty blues. It opened the doors for women to be as nasty as they wanted to be.

Continued in Part II

(There’s a bizarre, long-as-fuck song by Funkadelic called “Wars of Armageddon”, from their 1971 classic debut album Maggot Brain. In that song, someone blurts out the title of this article. So, despite being about black women in music, I couldn’t think of a better title. It’s appropriate to the subject matter.)