One photo of the two has Minnie in an florid, drop-waisted day dress, with straightened flapper hair, looking distinctly unsteady on her feet as she grabs hold of a grim-faced Joes padded shoulder. Related Topics: Big Bill Bronzy Blues Jefferson Airplane Memphis Minnie On This Day Copyright 2020 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. by Del Rey copyright 1997 Hobemian Records, (a version of this article was originally published in Acoustic Guitar Magazine 1997). She lived a long life, was at her best in middle age, and would spit tobacco wearing a chiffon ball gown. Memphis Minnie (known to her family as Kid) was born June 3, 1897, in Algiers Louisiana, the oldest of 13 brothers and sisters. He described the sound of her electric guitar as a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill. Watch this for some tips: It is difficult to tell whether audiences demanded different music, or if they bought what was promoted and available. Clearly she had by that time embraced the next phase of the blues. Their marriage and musical partnership fell apart in the mid-thirties, around the same time Minnie became increasingly featured as a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. Excluding contemporary artists, the most notable exception to this pattern was Memphis Minnie. We have 1 albums and 28 song lyrics in our database. Photo courtesy the Frank Driggs collection. Courtesy Vintage Books USA. He's In the Ring (Doin' the Same Old Thing) Memphis Minnie. The companies began to seek out and record other singers in the same vaudevillian genre. Queen of the Blues 1997 Blues Legends: Memphis Minnie, Vol. Memphis Minnie wrote Hoodoo Lady, When the Levee Breaks and Joliet Bound. Despite her Southern roots and popularity, she was as much a Chicago blues artist as anyone in her day. Primarily an urban, piano based music, it was perfect for the speciously prosperous Jazz Age atmosphere of the twenties, during which the music of Black Americans became increasingly influential to the mainstream. Memphis Minnie song lyrics collection. Before she turned ten, she and her family had relocated to Wall, Mississippi, just south of Memphis. Tracking down the ultimate woman blues guitar hero is problematic because woman blues singers seldom recorded as guitar players and woman guitar players (such as Rosetta Tharpe and Sister O.M. The wretchedness of hitting the fields at dawn led some to try life with the starvation box, as Roosevelt Sykes called the guitar. Her singing and songwriting, spirited demeanor, and superlative guitar playing propelled her to the upper echelons of a field then dominated by male guitarists and pianists. Guitar Queen. (101 songs) Salt & Pepper 19-03-2015 Prison Bound Blues (Blues People - 1923 - 1930) 01. Have fun! Elizabeth Kid Douglas, known as Memphis Minnie was an intricate guitarist, an astute songwriter and a stylistic innovator. Joe and Minnie based themselves in Chicago throughout the early 30s, playing clubs like the DeLisa and the Music Box, recording both together and separately. Sources not cited in the text are from record labels and personal conversations with musicians. Starting in 1929, her records lead us through twenty years of recorded blues and illustrate her life, as she moved from the rural South to urban Chicago. As Broonzy tells the story, in his autobiography Big Bill Blues, (Cassell and Co.London 1956) a jury of fellow musicians awarded Minnie the prize of a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of gin for her performance of Chauffeur Blues and Looking the World Over. He seems to play with a flatpick, mostly in standard tuning. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for BD Blues: Memphis Minnie - Memphis Minnie on AllMusic Lizzie Douglas was born on June 3, 1897 in Algiers, Louisiana. In our society, what is deemed important is often what has commercial value, and that is precisely what pushes blues off the front porch and onto 78s. If you are interested in Minnies guitar style, Ive made a Homespun video on how to figure her guitar parts in the various keys she plays in. Some of her mid-thirties recordings incorporate piano, drums and a few horn players and after 1935, she joined the group of musicians who worked regularly for Lester Melrose, a producer and talent scout who supplied blues artists for a number of labels. By 1929, Douglas had married another guitar-player, Joe McCoy, who was a good singer and guitarist, but reputedly a jealous fellow. There were traveling shows of all kinds, from lowdown to grand, but they all included comedy, dancers and musicians of every type from jug bands to elegant pianists. Minnie and Brown would get aboard and entertain the primarily white pleasure seekers, once debarking at Biggs Arkansas with $119 in tips. One of Memphis Minnies first musical partnerships was with Willie Brown, who is is better known for his association with Charlie Patton. Suzy Thompson, who plays blues fiddle and guitar is another current interpreter of Minnies songs. Memphis Minnie (Image credit: Getty). She also played for dances and store promotions. Her recorded output is not necessarily the same as her live set. This is the complete list of songs recorded by Memphis Minnie, in alphabetical order. Memphis Minnies music remained popular over two decades because it was lyrically and instrumentally in tune with the lives of Black Americans. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues". Memphis Minnie covered Bumble Bee and When the Sun Goes Down - Part 2. She grew up in Walls Mississippi, about 20 miles from Memphis on Route 61, in a time before rural electrification and national media created a mass culture. Beale Street was at this time an important bit of pavement, a place where segregation forced dentists and church ladies to mix with gamblers and whores, creating quite a lively atmosphere. She can walk. Why has this musician , with her enormous body of recordings, who waswell-loved by the Black blues audiences of the 30s and 40s been comparatively ignored by later, whiter audiences? Queen Of The Blues. After Son Joes death in 1962 Minnie lived in a nursing home until she died on August 6,1973, at the age of 76. The forties treated Minnie and Son Joe well and they performed both together and separately depending on finances, (they could make more money playing separate gigs). Minnie worked the streets and parks with Jed Davenports Beale Street Jug Band, and her guitar playing was influenced by the popular jug band musician Frank Stokes, whos guitar duets with Dan Sane are very similar to Minnies early style. The major labels pulled out of the blues market, and Minnies last recordings were for Regal in 1949. 1 the Complete post-war Recordings in Chronological Order. To buy Minnies original recordings checkArhoolie, andDocument. Memphis Minnies music remained popular over two decades because it was lyrically and instrumentally in tune with the lives of Black Americans. 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