Antedating of "Back Door Man"

[Fred Shapiro]

The Historical Dictionary of American Slang has 1969 as its first use for
_back door man_ 'adulterous male lover' (the citation is from Led
Zeppelin's song "Whole Lotta Love").  But Howlin' Wolf released Willie
Dixon's song "Back Door Man" in 1960:

I _am_ a back door man,
Well, the men don't know,
But the little girls understand.

This could be in the sense 'anal sodomist' (HDAS 1972) (probably not the
sense 'proctologist' [HDAS 1962]), but I imagine it's the 'adulterous male
lover' sense.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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