Ray Bourbon was a pioneering drag comedian, friend of Mae West and an early independent recording artist.   Ray was a deliberately enigmatic pop cult figure who may, or may not, have had a sex change operation in 1956.   Ray’s comedy was, at once, highbrow and lowbrow, overtly Gay and covertly subversive. Despite his influence on Gays, he remained vague about his own sexuality.

Throughout the 50’s and 60’s Bourbon entertained at hundreds of clubs throughout the US and released dozens of albums, certainly the most prolific female impersonator to have done the latter. Despite his knack for publicity (such as faking a sex change in 1956), by the late 1960’s Bourbon had fallen on hard times. In 1968 while traveling through Texas with trailer containing over 70 dogs, his car burst into flames and he was forced to lodge the animals with kennel keeper A. D. Blount. He eventually found work at the Jewel Box Revue in Kansas City, but by then Blount had sold the dogs to a research facility since Bourbon was unable to pay for their keep. Bourbon hired two young men ­ ­to work Blount over, but they panicked and killed the kennel-keeper. The men and Bourbon were all convicted as murder conspirators; as the mastermind, the 78 year old Bourbon was given a 99 year sentence. He died a short time later, on January 19, 1971 in the Howard County Texas prison.

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