Biography
Bessie Jackson served as the recording alias for Lucille Bogan, a pioneering female blues singer active during the 1920s and 1930s whose candid treatment of sexual themes retained the power to shock listeners even against the backdrop of a style already considered among the rawest in early commercial recordings, predating later explicit acts such as 2 Live Crew and Ludacris. Unlike the typical practice of blues performers adopting alternate names solely to circumvent existing label agreements, Bogan’s adoption of the Jackson identity involved a deeper shift that encompassed both nomenclature and artistic approach, after which she never returned to waxing material under her original surname. Although she had scored a 1927 hit in the race-record market with “Sweet Petunia” issued as Lucille Bogan, she appeared determined to leave that success behind. Emerging from Birmingham, Alabama’s vibrant blues community of the decade, she had been born Lucille Anderson in Mississippi and acquired the surname Bogan through marriage; she was also the aunt of pianist and trumpeter Thomas “Big Music” Anderson. Her earliest sessions, cut in New York City for OKeh in 1923, produced the titles “Lonesome Daddy Blues” and “Pawnshop Blues,” pieces that leaned more toward vaudeville than the blues suggested by their names. Roughly a year later she relocated to Chicago, where she cultivated a substantial local audience, before settling in New York City in the early 1930s and initiating an extended partnership with pianist Walter Roland. The duo’s rapport proved uncommonly sympathetic, with his keyboard work perfectly complementing her vocal delivery to such an extent that the boundary between their contributions often blurred, regardless of the name under which she recorded. Together they amassed more than one hundred sides before she ceased studio work in 1935. Among the Jackson releases, “B.D. Woman’s Blues” stands out for its frank discussion of “bull dykes,” a topic that still delivers greater impact decades later than comparable material by artists such as Holly Near or the Indigo Girls; the opening line declares, “Comin’ a time, women ain’t gonna need no men.” Her supporting musicians on various dates included guitarists Tampa Red and Josh White as well as banjoist Papa Charlie Jackson, and she herself received an accordion credit on one of her initial releases, an uncommon occurrence in the idiom. Equally notable was her songwriting output: she secured copyrights on dozens of compositions so distinctive that fellow blues artists routinely acknowledged her authorship rather than fashioning close imitations, a departure from common industry practice. She continued writing during her final years in California, with “Gonna Leave Town” serving as her last piece—a title that proved prophetic when Smokey Hogg recorded it in 1949, the year after her death from coronary sclerosis. Far from fading into obscurity, her catalog has remained in circulation through interpretations by Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women, by bandmember Ann Rabson on her own releases, and by the Asylum Street Spankers.