Puritan Americans lost their minds when rock & roll hit in the 1950s. All they heard in the beat and the lyrics was sex, sex, sex. Be bop a lula? Disgusting.

But their collective heads surely would have exploded like a dropped ambrosia salad had they only known what was going on with blues and R&B records. Both genres held a long tradition of innuendo and double entendre, both subtle and explicit, dating back to the first records pressed on wax, and likely far before. With titles like “You’ll Never Miss Your Jelly Until Your Jelly Roller Is Gone” and “Let Me Play With Your Poodle,” these records often didn’t make it to radio at all and relied on word of mouth among the Black communities to drive sales.

Benjamin “Bull Moose” Jackson played violin as a child but soon found himself seduced by the gleaming golden metal of the saxophone and the wailing sounds of jazz and blues. He joined a big band in the early 40s and his fellow musicians were stunned when he filled in for the lead singer at a concert one night and belted out the tunes. They didn’t even know he could sing.

Encouraged by his bandleader, Jackson signed a solo record deal and began releasing singles. It went pretty well. In 1947, he scored his first #1 on the R&B chart with “I Love You, Yes I Do,” which also became (reportedly) the first million-selling R&B song. He scored another #1 the following year.

At the same time, Jackson also recorded NSFW songs. One of these was called “Big Ten-Inch Record” — which was in fact the size of a long-playing record back then — and when the single (on a seven-inch) was released in 1952, it became an underground hit. Like all his suggestive songs, it received no radio play, but always got the crowd hooting and hollering during concerts.

Eventually, Jackson tired of the grind. Like many Black artists from that era, he didn’t make much money from his records, a fact of life which necessitated constant touring in order to make a decent living. In the 1960s, he hung up his saxophone, settled down in Washington DC, and went into catering.

But then fate decided to stir things up.

In the early 1980s, a Pennsylvania band called The Flashcats began playing “Big Ten-Inch Record” during their shows (possibly learning the song from Aerosmith’s 1975 version rather than the original). A DJ told the lead singer he knew Bull Moose Jackson’s whereabouts and the singer tracked him down in DC. Jackson joined The Flashcats for a couple of shows and the response was so enthusiastic that he went out on the road with the band and even went back into the studio to make a full-length record.

They were 12 inches by this time.

So listen to the band that plays the blues… with Bull Moose Jackson.