Before the anti-heteronormative hecklers got all "transgendered" on our ass, the term "drag queen" pretty much covered the wild and woolly range of female impersonators who tucked their jewels and camped it up oh so many decades and tubes of Duo Eyelash Adhesive ago. While primarily associated with risque and raunchy stage acts, many also recorded albums that are surprising in range.
Dragstravaganza
has lovingly documented over 80 years of these lost audio treasures -
from vaudeville recordings by Savoy and Brennan in 1923 to T.C. Jones'
spot-on impersonations of Tallulah Bankhead in the '50s to the Pearl
Box black drag revue in the '60s to Fist Goodbody's '70s S&M
dungeon drama to ex-Bowie paramour Romy Haag's Teutonic disco stylings
in the '80s and MUCH more. Sorted alphabetically and by category, the site features loads of album covers, photos, audio samples, links, bios and more.
Hmmm...this website didn't seem to mention San Francisco's "The Cockettes"
Posted by: Uncle Gaspard | April 13, 2005 at 02:17 PM
oddly enough, it doesn't appear as though the cockettes ever recorded an album (which would explain their exclusion from a discography). there is, however, a soundtrack CD for the cockettes documentary from a few years back:
http://www.grandelusion.com/CockettesCD.html
looks like it's made up of score and audio pulled from cockettes films and other unearthed footage, including an early sylvester track.
Posted by: monica | April 13, 2005 at 04:35 PM