‘Daddy-callin’ Mamas’ and ‘Jelly Beans’: sex work and ribaldry in the blues archive

Abstract

I present a thematic overview of sex work and ribaldry in recorded blues songs for the period c.1920–1942. My ambition is primarily documentary, to take up Paul Oliver's insistence that discussion of the blues must ultimately revolve around its ‘libidinous hub’ and to concretise Abbott and Seroff's characterisation of blues as ‘unabashedly licentious a music form as America has ever produced’. Ribald sex work songs are common in the blues archive, but have not been a focus of sustained study. A grasp of the significance of sex work provides a key to decoding creative wordplay, even as the relation between blues performers and real sex work must remain obscure.

‘Eyesight to the Blind’: Secular and Religious Dialogue in the ‘Devil's Music’

“…Given that his Screening the Blues (1968) covered a great deal of lewd material in a 50‐page chapter on ‘blue blues’ (compare Curtis, 2022), Songsters could claim that such material had been dealt with and need not be revisited as religious satire or parody. But excluding lewd and bawdy material recorded by ‘knowing’ or ‘sophisticated’ performers meant that Oliver dismissed just those most likely to satirize and parody religion.…”