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Background information | |
Birth name | Lizzie Douglas |
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Born | Tunica County, Mississippi, U.S. | June 3, 1897
Died | August 6, 1973 76) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. | (aged
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Years active | 1908–1958 |
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Lizzie Douglas (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973), better known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter whose recording career lasted for over three decades. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "When the Levee Breaks", "Me and My Chauffeur Blues", "Bumble Bee" and "Nothing in Rambling".
Douglas was born on June 3, 1897, probably in Tunica County, Mississippi, [1] although she claimed to have been born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in the Algiers neighborhood. [2] She was the eldest of 13 siblings. Her parents, Abe and Gertrude Douglas, nicknamed her Kid when she was young, and her family called her that throughout her childhood. It is reported that she disliked the name Lizzie. [3] When she first began performing, she played under the name Kid Douglas.
When she was seven years old, she and her family moved to Walls, Mississippi, south of Memphis, Tennessee. The following year, she received her first guitar, as a Christmas present. She learned to play the banjo by the age of 10 and the guitar by the age of 11, when she started playing at parties. [2] The family later moved to Brunswick, Tennessee. After Minnie's mother died, in 1922, Abe Douglas moved back to Walls, where he died in 1935. [4]
In 1910, at the age of 13, she ran away from home to live on Beale Street, in Memphis. She played on street corners for most of her teenage years, occasionally returning to her family's farm when she ran out of money. [5] Her sidewalk performances led to a tour of the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus from 1916 to 1920. [6] She then went back to Beale Street, with its thriving blues scene, and made her living by playing guitar and singing, supplementing her income with sex work (at that time, it was not uncommon for female performers to turn to sex work out of financial need). [7]
She began performing with Kansas Joe McCoy, her second husband, in 1929. They were discovered by a talent scout for Columbia Records, in front of a barber shop, where they were playing for dimes. [8] She and McCoy went to record in New York City and were given the names Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie by a Columbia A&R man. [9] Over the next few years she and McCoy released a series of records, performing as a duet. In February 1930 they recorded the song "Bumble Bee" for the Vocalion label, which they had already recorded for Columbia but which had not yet been released. [10] It became one of Minnie's most popular songs; she eventually recorded five versions of it. [11] Minnie and McCoy continued to record for Vocalion until August 1934, when they recorded a few sessions for Decca Records. Their last session together was for Decca, in September. [12] They divorced in 1935. [2]
An anecdote from Big Bill Broonzy's autobiography, Big Bill Blues, recounts a cutting contest between Minnie and Broonzy in a Chicago nightclub on June 26, 1933, for the prize of a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of gin. Each singer was to sing two songs; after Broonzy sang "Just a Dream" and "Make My Getaway," Minnie won the prize with "Me and My Chauffeur Blues" and "Looking the World Over". [13] Paul and Beth Garon, in their biography Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues, suggested that Broonzy's account may have combined various contests at different dates, as these songs of Minnie's date from the 1940s rather than the 1930s. [14]
By 1935, Minnie was established in Chicago and had become one of a group of musicians who worked regularly for the record producer and talent scout Lester Melrose. [15] Back on her own after her divorce from McCoy, Minnie began to experiment with different styles and sounds. She recorded four sides for Bluebird Records in July 1935, returned to the Vocalion label in August, and then recorded another session for Bluebird in October, this time accompanied by Casey Bill Weldon, her first husband. By the end of the 1930s, in addition to her output for Vocalion, she had recorded nearly 20 sides for Decca and eight sides for Bluebird. [12] She also toured extensively in the 1930s, mainly in the South. [15]
In 1938, Minnie returned to recording for the Vocalion label, this time accompanied by Charlie McCoy, Kansas Joe McCoy's brother, on mandolin. [12] Around this time she married the guitarist and singer Ernest Lawlars, known as Little Son Joe. They began recording together in 1939, with Son adding a more rhythmic backing to Minnie's guitar. [15] They recorded for Okeh Records in the 1940s and continued to record together through the decade. By 1941 Minnie had started playing electric guitar, [16] and in May of that year she recorded her biggest hit, "Me and My Chauffeur Blues". A follow-up date produced two more blues standards, "Looking the World Over" and Lawlars's "Black Rat Swing" (issued under the name "Mr. Memphis Minnie"). In the 1940s Minnie and Lawlars continued to work at their "home club," Chicago's popular 708 Club, where they were often joined by Broonzy, Sunnyland Slim, or Snooky Pryor, and also played at many of the other better-known Chicago nightclubs. During the 1940s Minnie and Lawlars performed together and separately in the Chicago and Indiana areas. [17] Minnie often played at "Blue Monday" parties at Ruby Lee Gatewood's, on Lake Street. [18] The poet Langston Hughes, who saw her perform at the 230 Club on New Year's Eve, 1942, wrote of her "hard and strong voice" being made harder and stronger by amplification and described the sound of her electric guitar as "a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill." [19]
Later in the 1940s, Minnie lived in Indianapolis and Detroit. She returned to Chicago in the early 1950s. [20] By the late 1940s, clubs had begun hiring younger and cheaper artists, and Columbia had begun dropping blues artists, including Memphis Minnie. Unable to adapt to changing tastes, she moved to smaller labels, such as Regal, Checker, and J.O.B. [21]
Minnie continued to record into the 1950s, but her health began to decline. With public interest in her music waning, she retired from her musical career, and in 1957 she and Lawlars returned to Memphis. [22] Periodically, she appeared on Memphis radio stations to encourage young blues musicians. In 1958 she played at a memorial concert for Big Bill Broonzy. [23] As the Garons wrote in Woman with Guitar, "She never laid her guitar down, until she could literally no longer pick it up." She suffered a stroke in 1960, which left her confined to a wheelchair. Lawlars died the following year, and Minnie had another stroke a short while after. She could no longer survive on her Social Security income. Magazines wrote about her plight, and readers sent her money for assistance. [24] [25] She spent her last years in the Jell Nursing Home, in Memphis, where she died of a stroke in 1973. [26] She is buried at the New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery, in Walls, DeSoto County, Mississippi. [2] A headstone paid for by Bonnie Raitt was erected by the Mount Zion Memorial Fund on October 13, 1996, with 34 family members in attendance, including her sister Bob. The ceremony was taped for broadcast by the BBC. [27] Her headstone is inscribed:
Lizzie "Kid" Douglas Lawlers aka Memphis Minnie
The inscription on the back of her gravestone reads:
The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions, but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie's songs we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own. [28]
Minnie was known as a polished professional and an independent woman who knew how to take care of herself. [5] She presented herself to the public as being feminine and ladylike, wearing expensive dresses and jewelry, but she was aggressive when she needed to be and was not shy when it came to fighting. [29] According to the blues musician Johnny Shines, "Any men fool with her she'd go for them right away. She didn't take no foolishness off them. Guitar, pocket knife, pistol, anything she get her hand on she'd use it". [5] According to Homesick James, she chewed tobacco all the time, even while singing or playing the guitar, and always had a cup at hand in case she wanted to spit. [30] Most of the music she made was autobiographical; Minnie expressed a lot of her personal life in music.[ citation needed ]
Minnie was married three times, [2] although no marriage certificates have been found. [31] It is believed that her first husband was Casey Bill Weldon, whom she married in the early 1920s. Her second husband was the guitarist and mandolin player Kansas Joe McCoy, whom she married in 1929. [2] They filed for divorce in 1934. McCoy's jealousy of Minnie's professional success has been given as one reason for the breakup of their marriage. [32] Minnie was also reported to have lived with a man known as "Squirrel" in the mid- to late 1930s. [33] Around 1938 she met the guitarist Ernest Lawlars (Little Son Joe), who became her new musical partner, and they married shortly thereafter; [34] Minnie's union records, covering 1939 onwards, give her name as Minnie Lawlars. [35] He dedicated songs to her, including "Key to the World", in which he addresses her as "the woman I got now" and calls her "the key to the world."
Minnie was not religious and rarely went to church. The only time she was reported to have gone to church was to see a gospel group perform. [32] She was baptized shortly before she died, probably to please her sister Daisy Johnson. [36] A house in Memphis where she once lived, at 1355 Adelaide Street, still exists. [37]
Memphis Minnie has been described as "the most popular female country blues singer of all time". [38] Big Bill Broonzy said that she could "pick a guitar and sing as good as any man I've ever heard." [13] Minnie lived to see a renewed appreciation of her recorded work during the revival of interest in blues music in the 1960s. She was an influence on later singers, such as Big Mama Thornton, Jo Ann Kelly [2] and Erin Harpe. [39] She was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980. [40]
"Me and My Chauffeur Blues" was recorded by Jefferson Airplane on their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off , with Signe Anderson as lead vocalist. "Can I Do It for You" was recorded by Donovan in 1965, under the title "Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)". A 1929 Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy song, "When the Levee Breaks", [41] was adapted (with altered lyrics and a different melody) by Led Zeppelin and released in 1971 on their fourth album. "I'm Sailin'" was covered by Mazzy Star on their 1990 debut album, She Hangs Brightly . Her family is currently suing record companies and some artists for royalties and for using her music without permission. In 2007, Minnie was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Walls, Mississippi. [42]
Year | Title | Genre | Label |
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1964 | Blues Classics by Memphis Minnie | blues | Blues Classics |
c. 1967 | Early Recordings with Kansas Joe McCoy, vol. 2 | blues | Blues Classics |
1968 | Love Changin' Blues: 1949, Blind Willie McTell and Memphis Minnie | blues | Biograph Records |
1973 | 1934–1941 | blues | Flyright Records |
1973 | 1941–1949 | blues | Flyright Records |
1977 | Hot Stuff: 1936–1949 | blues | Magpie Records |
1982 | World of Trouble | blues | Flyright Records |
1983 | Moaning the Blues | blues | MCA Records |
1984 | In My Girlish Days: 1930–1935 | blues | Travelin' Man |
1987 | 1930–1941 | blues | Old Tramp |
1988 | I Ain't No Bad Gal | blues | CBS |
1991 | Hoodoo Lady (1933–1937) | blues | Columbia |
1994 | In My Girlish Days | blues | Blues Encore |
1996 | Let's Go to Town | blues | Orbis |
1997 | Queen of the Blues | blues | Columbia |
1997 | "The Queen of the Blues": 1929–1941 | blues | Frémeaux & Associés |
2000 | Pickin' the Blues | blues | Catfish Records |
2003 | Me and My Chauffeur Blues | blues | Proper Records Ltd. |
2007 | Complete Recorded Works 1935–1941 in Chronological Order, vol. 1, 10 January to 31 October 1935 | blues | Document Records |
unknown | Night Time Blues, Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie | blues | History |
2022 | The Rough Guide to Memphis Minnie - Queen of the Country Blues | blues | World Music Networks |
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
Delta blues is one of the earliest-known styles of blues. It originated in the Mississippi Delta and is regarded as a regional variant of country blues. Guitar and harmonica are its dominant instruments; slide guitar is a hallmark of the style. Vocal styles in Delta blues range from introspective and soulful to passionate and fiery.
Lester Franklin Melrose was a talent scout who was one of the first American producers of Chicago blues records.
Big Bill Broonzy was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country music to mostly African-American audiences. In the 1930s and 1940s, he navigated a change in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class black audiences. In the 1950s, a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
John Len Chatman, known professionally as Memphis Slim, was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other artists. He made over 500 recordings.
"When the Levee Breaks" is a country blues song written and first recorded by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929. The lyrics reflect experiences during the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
Lil Green was an American classic female blues singer and songwriter. She was among the leading female rhythm and blues singers of the 1940s, with a sensual soprano voice. Gospel singer R.H. Harris lauded her voice, and her interpretation of religious songs.
Wilbur Joe "Kansas Joe" McCoy was an American Delta blues singer, musician and songwriter.
"Why Don't You Do Right?" is an American blues and jazz-influenced pop song usually credited to Kansas Joe McCoy. A minor key twelve-bar blues with a few chord substitutions, it is considered a classic "woman's blues" song and has become a standard. Singer Lil Green recorded a popular rendition in 1941, which Peggy Lee recorded the next year — accompanied by Benny Goodman — and made one of her signature songs.
Hudson Whittaker, known as Tampa Red, was an American Chicago blues musician.
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.
Jo Ann Kelly was an English blues singer and guitarist. She is respected for her strong blues vocal style and for playing country blues guitar.
William McKinley "Jazz" Gillum was an American blues harmonica player.
William "Casey Bill" Weldon was an American country blues musician.
Ernest Lawlars was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and composer, known professionally as Little Son Joe.
"Me and My Chauffeur Blues" is a song written and recorded by blues singer and guitarist Memphis Minnie in 1941. It was added to the U.S. National Recording Registry in 2019. A number of other musicians have recorded the song, or adaptations of it, often under shortened titles.
"Bottle Up and Go" or "Bottle It Up and Go" is a song that is a standard of the blues. Based on earlier songs, Delta bluesman Tommy McClennan recorded "Bottle It Up and Go" in 1939. The song has been interpreted and recorded by numerous artists, sometimes using alternate titles, such as "Step It Up and Go", "Shake It Up and Go", etc.
Black Bob was the pseudonym used by an American blues piano player, based in Chicago, who recorded widely in the 1930s accompanying other performers. His real name is unknown, but suggestions have included Bob Hudson, Bob Robinson, Bob Alexander, and Bob Schanault.
Nelson Wilborn, better known as Red Nelson or Dirty Red, was an American blues singer and occasional guitarist. His recording career lasted well over a decade. Two of his standout songs are "Crying Mother Blues" and "Streamline Train". His accompanists on record variously included Cripple Clarence Lofton, Blind John Davis, Black Bob, Kansas Joe McCoy, Papa Charlie McCoy, Big Bill Broonzy and Lonnie Johnson.
Jimmie Gordon was an American Chicago blues pianist, singer, and songwriter. In the course of his career he accompanied Memphis Minnie, Bumble Bee Slim, and Big Bill Broonzy, amongst others. He had a hit with "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water" (1936) and was active on the Chicago blues scene for a number of years leading up to World War II. He is known to have recorded 67 tracks between 1934 and 1946. Gordon was a mainstay of Decca Records during the 1930s and early 1940s, with his recorded work utilizing a piano accompaniment, as well as guitar, or with a small band that he assembled for the work.
In addition, Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, as well as Living Blues and Blues Unlimited , all made public appeals to Minnie's many fans to send money to Daisy for Minnie's care. And the fans responded.
The British blues community rallied around the cause of blueswoman Memphis Minnie, purportedly the first of the Chicago artists to play electric guitar and one its finest instrumentalists. By the time researchers found her she was living in a nursing home in Memphis, paralyzed by a debilitating stroke. Jo-Ann and Dave Kelly began playing benefits on her behalf and soon other musicians and clubs arranged charity concerts to help the impoverished singer cover her medical expenses. Jo-Ann Kelly also sold pictures of Minnie, which provided the blueswoman with some badly needed income, and letters and cards from her British fans gave her some comfort and satisfaction in her last years.