Here's a poster for a blues concert to benefit a women's shelter in Boston. It contains a couple of funny plays on words. The first joke is the name of the one of the sponsoring organizations - Blind Lemon Aid. This seems like a typical name for fundraising groups or concerts, such as Band Aid, Farm Aid, etc.

But it has a double meaning. Blind Lemon Jefferson was one of the most popular American blues musicians of the 1920s. (He was blind and Lemon was his first name, or at least the one he used.) And you know what lemonade is...

The other strange thing on the poster is the band name U. B. Bigg. We've never seen that band, so it is possible that it's the name of the lead singer. After all, there was a famous philanthropist from Texas whose parents named her Ima Hogg (like "I'm a pig.")

But even if it is a real name, it also has a double meaning: "You be big." In a dialect of American English often used in blues music, called "Black English" or sometimes "Ebonics", that means "You are big."

Sign on a telephone pole, Somerville, MA, USA

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