Sylvester

My Country 'Tis Of Thee - YouTube

Fifty years ago, a Black gay drag performer in San Francisco named Sylvester released an album of rock and blues cover songs with a group of straight white men that he dubbed The Hot Band.

The album, which featured a scented gardenia sticker on the cover, was titled "Scratch My Flower." It sold miserably at the time but, curiously, is still in-print, packaged along with the group's second venture for Blue Thumb records, Bazaar.

Those first two albums have some strong musical moments but are weakened a bit by Sylvester's often muddy vocals, an under-enunciated piercing falsetto that would nonetheless send his solo disco recordings of the late '70s into orbit. Sylvester's 1978 dance club hit "You Make Me Feel [Mighty Real]" was admitted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2019.

The closing track on "Scratch My Flower" is a rave-up rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." I've never settled on whether this was intended to be an ironic send-up or sincere patriotic expression, but it's one of the highlights on the record.

Sylvester, who was reared in the Pentacostal church but was turned away after coming out as gay, died in 1988 from AIDS-related complications. He was 41.