Critic Ernest Borneman once named a big three of the classic female blues era: Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and a third name that almost always draws a blank stare, Lucille Bogan. Born Lucille Anderson in 1897, with records split between Amory, Mississippi, and Birmingham, Alabama, she married a railway man, raised a son, navigated a divorce, and remarried, all before recording vaudeville songs for OKeh Records in New York in 1923. Later that same year she cut Pawn Shop Blues in Atlanta, becoming the first Black blues singer recorded outside the northern industry hubs, a geographical break from the corporate studios that also freed her from their control over what she could sing.

That independence produced the raw, unapologetic catalog this episode explores: songs about heavy drinking, prostitution, and transactional relationships, a brilliant  ...