Many tattoo parlors across the country offer Friday the 13th specials, most often offering small flash art for $13. If you decide to visit your local tattoo shop today, be sure to play this classic slab of Americana from a 1950 78 rpm record on the Fortune label. The artist is Skeets McDonald (spelled “Skeet’s” on the label), and the song is “Tattooed Lady.” Next to The Who’s “Tattoo” (and Groucho Marx’s “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” of course) it’s the most awesome song ever written about tattoos.
 

 
The tune details a man’s marriage to a woman who is tattooed with a map of the United States. The lyrics seem to indicate that the map is laid out pretty strangely—I’m not sure if there’s any way to imagine this being “geographically correct”:

Once I married a tattooed lady
Twas on a dark and windy day
And tattooed all around her body
Was a map of the good ol’ USA
And every night before I’d go to sleep
I’d jerk back the covers and I’d take a peek:
Upon her leg was Minnesota,
On her knee was Tennessee,
And tattooed on her back
Was good old Rack-em-Sack (Arkansas)
The place where I long to be.
And on her (wolf whistle) was West Virginia
Through those hills I just love to roam;
But when I saw the moonlight on her Mississippi
That’s when I recognized my home sweet home.

West Virginia likely seems to be the woman’s boobs or ass. One would assume she has Mississippi on her hoo-ha, but then again, maybe my mind’s just in the gutter. Wherever it is, clearly there’s some distortion going on with this particular map.

Anyway, play the song here or purchase it on the Toro Records EP Skeets McDonald’s Tattooed Lady Plus Three Other Sizzlers available HERE.

Take it away, Skeets: