The popular image of a 1930s Mississippi bluesman is a solitary figure pouring sorrow into a battered guitar, but one of the era's most prolific and commercially successful artists packed juke joints with clever, wink-and-nudge double entendres. This episode explores the life of Bo Carter, born around 1893 or 1894 in Bolton, Mississippi, into a musical family: his father Henderson, a former slave, was a skilled fiddler, his mother Eliza sang and played guitar, and his brothers Lonnie, Sam, and Harry all became musicians. Carter managed and played in the family group, the Mississippi Sheiks, alongside Lonnie, Sam, and friend Walter Vinson, tailoring set lists to both white and Black audiences across the segregated South.

After a 1928 recording debut backing singer Alec Johnson, Carter went solo and cut roughly 110 sides during the Great Depr ...