Hokum Blues

Hokum blues is the comic wing of pre-war blues: upbeat songs built on extended double-entendre metaphors about sex, food and drink, delivered with a wink over a bouncing, good-time accompaniment. The style was named by *Tampa Red and Georgia Tom*'s 1928 hit "It's Tight Like That" and carried by *Bo Carter*, the *Mississippi Sheiks*, *Lucille Bogan* and the jug and kazoo bands of the *Famous Hokum Boys* circle. Against the Delta's stark confessionals, hokum offered party records for Depression-era audiences, vaudeville humour translated to the race-record market.