Who was the first woman to have a song banned by the BBC?
If you’re trying to attract attention to your music but don’t have the commercial prowess required to break into the pop charts, why not try having your song banned by the BBC?
Looking back across the broadcaster’s extensive history of censored songs, it seems like an equally adept method of having your music heard.
‘Inform, educate, entertain’ were the core principles of the BBC, as set out by Lord Reith over a century ago, but the broadcaster’s apparent commitment to representing the interests of all British people fell apart quite quickly. Rather than showcasing the length and breadth of culture and society during those early years, ‘the Beeb’ often acted as a kind of cultural doorman, particularly with regard to music. Throughout their history, there have been numerous songs which the broadcaster has shielded from the British public, deciding their own barriers of acceptability seemingly at will.
Particularly during the extensive run of Top of the Pops, there was no shortage of infamous bans and snubs by ‘the Beeb’. For instance, their ban on the Sex Pistols’ anti-jubilee anthem ‘God Save The Queen’ in 1977, on the grounds of apparent poor taste, ironically helped to establish the punk rock revolution on the mainstream stage, and the ensuing attention brought on from the ban sent the single all the way to number two in the singles chart, much to the presumable chagrin of the broadcaster.
The BBC had clearly not learnt their lesson though, as a few years later, during the Gulf War, they made the bold decision to ban virtually every song that mentioned war, violence, or featured any themes remotely related to the Middle East in one fell swoop, impacting everything from Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’ to The Cure’s ‘Killing an Arab’. Once again, these bans did little to impact the musical landscape, aside from driving hordes of people towards the banned material.
Where did this culture of banning supposedly taboo material begin, though? As it turns out, the BBC have been banning music since its earliest days, with one notable example from the 1930s targeting George Formby’s classic, if slightly poorly aged, comedy song ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’. That decade also saw the very first female artist to be given a rap across the knuckles by ‘the Beeb’ in the form of jazz empress Bessie Smith.
Smith blazed a trail that countless artists would follow, but the 1933 triumph ‘Gimme a Pigfoot’ was arguably her defining moment. Although the recording, capturing the spirit of Harlem, was a landmark moment in American music history, the BBC didn’t share that view. Instead, reportedly due to its alcohol-infused content and apparently suggestive themes, the broadcaster banned the song, thus censoring one of the most important voices jazz has ever witnessed.
Arguably, there is a case for the idea that Smith was unfairly penalised by the BBC due to her race, too. After all, she was hardly the only artist to sing about drinking and partying, and if you look at the kind of material that was banned in subsequent years, including Billie Holiday during the 1940s and Shirley Bassey in the 1950s, there does seem to be a pattern of Black women being disproportionately targeted by the BBC’s restriction of music.
Fortunately, the national broadcaster has since come to its senses, and the vast majority of songs once banned by the iron fist of Reith, Ogilvie, Checkland, or any number of the other exclusively white, male, director generals of the BBC have since returned to the airwaves.
Billie Holiday’s ‘Gloomy Sunday’, for instance, was banned back in the 1940s in the thought that it would damage wartime morale, but it eventually found its way back into the broadcaster’s good books in 2002. Similarly, ‘Gimme a Pigfoot’ has been off the ban list for a number of decades now, but Bessie Smith still holds the bragging rights for being the first woman to have a song banned by ‘Beebs’.
