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The following is a list of classic female blues singers.
Lucille Nelson Hegamin was an American singer and entertainer and an early African-American blues recording artist.
Papa Charlie Jackson was an early American bluesman and songster who accompanied himself with a banjo guitar, a guitar, or a ukulele. His recording career began in 1924. Much of his life remains a mystery, but his draft card lists his birthplace as New Orleans, Louisiana, and his death certificate states that he died in Chicago, Illinois, on May 7, 1938.
Floyd Council was an American blues guitarist, mandolin player, and singer. He was a practitioner of the Piedmont blues, which was popular in the southeastern United States in the 1920s and 1930s. He was sometimes credited as Dipper Boy Council and promoted as "The Devil's Daddy-in-Law".
Samuel Gene Maghett, known as Magic Sam, was an American Chicago blues musician. He was born in Grenada County, Mississippi, and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Little Walter. After moving to Chicago at the age of 19, he was signed by Cobra Records and became well known as a bluesman after the release of his first record, "All Your Love", in 1957. He was known for his distinctive tremolo guitar playing.
Edna Hicks was an American blues singer and musician. Her recorded songs include "Hard Luck Blues" and "Poor Me Blues". She also recorded "Down Hearted Blues", and "Gulf Coast Blues" on the Brunswick label in 1923.
Eva Taylor was an American blues singer and stage actress.
William Bunch, known as Peetie Wheatstraw, was an American musician, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers.
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the other singers in this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues.
Frank Stokes was an American blues musician, songster, and blackface minstrel, who is considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style.
Sara Martin was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as "The Famous Moanin' Mama" and "The Colored Sophie Tucker". She made many recordings, including a few under the names Margaret Johnson and Sally Roberts.
Bessie Mae Smith was an American blues singer from St. Louis, who recorded for the Okeh, Vocalion and Paramount record labels under a variety of names between 1927 and 1941. She is reported to have been married to Delta bluesman Big Joe Williams, who sometimes credited her with writing his song “Baby, Please Don't Go”. Her songs often included surreal imagery and sexual metaphors.
Viola McCoy was an American blues singer who performed in the classic female blues style during a career that lasted from the early 1920s to the late 1930s.
Maggie Jones was an American blues singer and pianist who recorded thirty-eight songs between 1923 and 1926. She was billed, alternately, as "The Texas Moaner" and "The Texas Nightingale". Among her best-remembered songs are "Single Woman's Blues", "Undertaker's Blues", and "Northbound Blues".
Martha Copeland was an American classic female blues singer. She recorded 34 songs between 1923 and 1928. She was promoted by Columbia Records as "Everybody's Mammy", but her records did not sell in the quantities achieved by the Columbia recording artists Bessie Smith and Clara Smith. Apart from her recording career, little is known of her life.
Hannah Sylvester was an American blues singer who performed in the classic female blues style, which was popular during the 1920s. She was billed as "Harlem's Mae West".
Irene Scruggs was an American Piedmont blues and country blues singer, who was also billed as Chocolate Brown and Dixie Nolan. She recorded songs such as "My Back to the Wall" and "Good Grindin'" and worked with Clarence Williams, Joe "King" Oliver, Lonnie Johnson, Little Brother Montgomery, Blind Blake, Albert Nicholas, and Kid Ory. Scruggs achieved some success but today is largely forgotten.
Mattie Hite was an American blues singer in the classic female blues style.
Coot Grant was an American classic female blues, country blues, and vaudeville singer and songwriter. On her own and with her husband and musical partner, Wesley "Kid" Wilson, she was popular with African American audiences from the 1910s to the early 1930s.
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