Lucille Bogan

Lucille Bogan (April 1, 1897 – August 10, 1948) was an American classic female blues singer and songwriter, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. Music critic Ernest Borneman noted that Bogan was one of “the big three of the blues”, along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Many of Bogan’s songs have been recorded by later blues and jazz musicians. Many of her songs were sexually explicit, and she was generally considered to have been a dirty bluesmusician.

She was born Lucille Anderson in Amory, Mississippi, and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1914, she married Nazareth Lee Bogan, a railwayman, and gave birth to a son, Nazareth Jr., in either 1915 or 1916. She later divorced Bogan and married James Spencer, who was 22 years younger than her.

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