CD: $32.41 MP3: $9.49. It remains vital and influential today because of her inventive, rhythmic guitar playing and her songs, which capture people … Bill grabbed half the prize (the bottle of whiskey) and took it off to drink under a table. Their sessions in May and December of 1941 fused her more urban sound, (for example her vocal delivery on “Nothin’ In Ramblin”), with Son Joe’s back-up style, which combined big chords with an insistent beat to create a chunky swing feel. CD : $23 ... MEMPHIS MINNIE › See all 36 albums by Memphis Minnie.   By 1929, Douglas had married another guitar-player, Joe McCoy, who was a good singer and guitarist, but reputedly a jealous fellow. Memphis Minnie (born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973) was an American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter from the late 1920s to the 1950s, one of the most influential country blues musicians to have ever recorded.   Columbia was responsible for bestowing their geographical monikers: Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe. Unlimited free Memphis Minnie music - Click to play My Gage Is Going Up, Can't Afford To Lose My Man and whatever else you want! The best tune of that session, in which Minnie generally sounded tired and overwrought, is “Downhome Girl” which is sung with great feeling but too many notes on the wrong frets. Queen Of The Blues. Apparently people in Chicago, who had never actually seen her play, were skeptical–so far no women instrumentalists had become prominent on the tough country blues circuit, although some (like guitarist Mattie Delaney), made a brief, tantalizing appearance, then disappeared. Memphis Minnie. Lizzie Douglas was born on June 3, 1897 in Algiers, Louisiana. Memphis Minnie's songs: Listen to songs by Memphis Minnie on Myspace, Stream Free Online Music by Memphis Minnie She was known to spit mid-song without losing a beat. Memphis Minnie’s music remained popular over two decades because it was lyrically and instrumentally in tune with the lives of Black Americans. The most popular and prolific blueswoman outside the vaudeville tradition, she earned the respect of critics, the support of record-buying fans, and the unqualified praise of the blues artists she worked with throughout her long career. The companies began to seek out and record other singers in the same vaudevillian genre. Songs Sort by: Bestselling.   The commercial success of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920, alerted record companies to the existence of black record buyers. Excluding contemporary artists, the most notable exception to this pattern was Memphis Minnie. A full-length biography, “Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues” by Paul and Beth Garon was published by DaCapo press in 1998 with a 2nd edition in 2014. Yet she remains comparatively unknown and under-studied in relation to her influence and importance to the development of blues music and guitar playing. Play Memphis Minnie hit new songs and download Memphis Minnie MP3 songs and music album online on … 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. There are also additional hints as to positions, and links to sound recordings on the Playing Memphis Minnie page. Minnie’s arrival in Chicago precipitated a showdown with the reigning King, Big Bill Broonzy.1. During this period Minnie began playing much less; the guitar no longer combines bass, treble and rhythm parts, leaving that to the other instruments, and instead starts to sound more like what we think of as blues today, with soulful bends and well-placed twangs on songs like the swing influenced “Good Morning”(1936) and “Hot Stuff”(1937), both of which she played in standard tuning. She got her first guitar at age ten or 11. Minnie and Joe began a steady series of recording dates in New York, and Memphis, first for Columbia, later for Vocalion, Decca, Okeh and Bluebird. A 1953 stomper about STD's. Why has this musician , with her enormous body of recordings, who was well-loved by the Black blues audiences of the ’30s and ’40s been comparatively ignored by later, whiter audiences? It’s rural party music, with doubling of parts helping punch the sound through in a loud environment in the pre-electric age. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and " Me and My Chauffeur Blues ". Brown provided the solid rhythm and bass lines she seemed to require from all her men. He described the sound of her electric guitar as ” a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill”. Kansas Joe,and Minnie were guitarists of equal ability, and the interplay of their instruments is like a great conversation: with both of them switching between treble and bass. This is the complete list of songs recorded by Memphis Minnie, in alphabetical order. We have 1 albums and 28 song lyrics in our database. Two of the judges, John Estes and Richard Jones hoisted the victorious Minnie on their shoulders while Kansas Joe remarked sourly “Put her down. Perhaps the glamour of beaded and tiaraed blues royalty seemed wrong for a time of soup kitchens and extensive poverty, although blues listeners surely always lived in poverty. 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. 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. Big Bill Broonzy recalls her beating both him and Tampa Red in a guitar contest and claims she was the best woman guitarist he had ever heard. The official job prospects for black women were limited to domestic service and farm work both of which demanded grueling labor and subservience for low pay. 1 the Complete post-war Recordings in Chronological Order. 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”. One of Memphis Minnie’s first musical partnerships was with Willie Brown, who is is better known for his association with Charlie Patton. They returned to Memphis where Minnie’s sister Daisy took care of them. Her recordings were reissued by Chris Strachwitz on Blues Classics in the late sixties, and had a profound influence on several young musicians, particularly the late guitarist JoAnn Kelly, and Maria Muldaur who still sings Minnie’s songs today. She also proved to have as good taste in musical husbands as music and sustained working marriages with guitarists Casey Bill Weldon, Joe McCoy, and Ernest Lawlars. The major labels pulled out of the blues market, and Minnie’s last recordings were for Regal in 1949. The Songs. Master finger-style guitar player. Minnie’s fantastically vituperative vocal delivery on some songs may be due in part to having a cheek full of Copenhagen. They mixed blues with pop tunes, her favorite cover being “What Makes You Do Me Like You Do Do Do”. Styles were shifting toward jump blues bands and by the mid ’50s the record industry had changed irrevocably with the fabrication of rock and roll. She was an African American blues musician and singer. Memphis Minnie (Lizzie Douglas, 1897-1973) was one of the premier blues artists of the 1930s and ‘40s. by Del Rey copyright 1997 Hobemian Records, (a version of this article was originally published in Acoustic Guitar Magazine 1997). are repertoire perennials. Born in Algiers, LA, in 1897, Lizzie Douglas forged a reputation as Memphis Minnie during … Memphis Minnie. To place an order or for customer service, call toll-free 1-800-336-4627 or outside the United States, call 1-610-649-7565 Broonzy and Minnie became good friends, and played together locally and on the road. The back-up parts are as interesting as the melody parts, especially on tunes like “When the Levee Breaks”, recorded in 1929, in Spanish tuning capoed to Bb (the third fret) or “Crazy Crying Blues” from 1931, also in Spanish, capoed to C# (the sixth fret). She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist. Complete Recorded 2 Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe. Lizzie Douglas (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973), 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 "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and … Memphis Minnie, Black Bob, Bill Settles / Memphis Minnie: Memphis Minnie, Black Bob, Bill Settles / Memphis Minnie - Joe Louis Strut / He's In The Ring (Doing That Same Old Thing) ‎ (Shellac, 10") Vocalion (2) 03046: US: 1935: Sell This Version   In 1933, when Big Bill Broonzy was very popular in Chicago, a blues contest between him and Memphis Minnie took place in a night club. In guitarist Willie Moore’s recollection, (reported in Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow’s King of the Delta Blues; The Life and Music of Charlie Patton, 1988 Rock Chapel Press) Minnie was the better guitarist, —“She was a guitar king”—-he said—- although Brown was better known. To buy Minnie’s original recordings check Arhoolie, and Document . Listen to your favorite songs from Memphis Minnie. Minnie was quick to embrace the latest technologies in order to be heard above the crowds She was one of the first blues players to use a National in 1929, and to play an electric wood body National and various electric guitars in the ’40s and ’50s. She can walk”. ~ Barry Lee Pearson. Hoodoo Lady. View Memphis Minnie song lyrics by popularity along with songs featured in, albums, videos and song meanings. It remains vital and influential today because of her inventive, rhythmic guitar playing and her songs, which capture people and events and bring them to life across the years. Memphis Minnie originally did Soo Cow Soo, Moonshine, Can't Afford to Lose My Man, Pig Meat on the Line and other songs. Photo courtesy the Frank Driggs collection. As a child, she was called Kid Douglas and she learned how to play the guitar and banjo. Some of Minnie’s best lyrics come from this period, like those in the autobiographical “In My Girlish Days”, (1941)which she played in G in standard tuning. Memphis Minnie is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest artists in the Blues world and this collection highlights why. Their guitar duets span the spectrum of African-American folk and popular music, including spirituals, comic dialogs, and old-time dance pieces, but Memphis Minnie's best work consisted of deep blues like "Moaning the Blues." He standardized the sound of his blues offerings, using musicians like Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Thomas Dorsey to back up different artists. 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. In 1939 she married Ernest “Little Son Joe” Lawlars, a Memphis based guitarist who was her partner for the next 23 years. The traveling musician was often a lonely stranger, an outsider who might not know the local situation, and musicians often teamed up. 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. She recorded her most popular song, “Bumble Bee Blues,” at her first session in 1929 and re-recorded the song repeatedly throughout her career, including a session with The Memphis Jug Band. Listen to the Memphis Minnie Vol. She and Brown began playing together around 1915 in the resort town of Bedford Mississippi, where tourists could take a ferryboat trip around nearby Lake Cormorant. Although Memphis Minnie is gone, her music is still full of life, and her influence can be heard in the music of the many Chicago blues players who came up during her reign in the thirties and forties. Minnie settled Memphis in the early ’20s. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues". For guitar players, the first part of her career is definitely the most inspiring, as her inventive variations make masterpieces of tunes like “When The Levee Breaks”(1930) or “Let’s Go To Town”(1931). She also played for dances and store promotions. She lived a long life, was at her best in middle age, and would spit tobacco wearing a chiffon ball gown. He's In the Ring (Doin' the Same Old Thing) Memphis Minnie. These sides were never issued by Regal but can now be heard on the Biograph CD Memphis Minnie: Early Rhythm and Blues 1949. In terms of her influence on the development of blues, she was an important player in the Chicago clubs during the ’40s when musicians like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rodgers and Johnny Shines, were coming up. in the ’20s when record companies first perceived a market for the style. Memphis Minnie (born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973) was an American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter from the late 1920s to the 1950s, one of the most influential country blues musicians to have ever recorded. Her recordings with Son Joe are in duet style, with piano, bass or drums added on some sessions. Memphis Minnie originally did Soo Cow Soo, Moonshine, Can't Afford to Lose My Man, Pig Meat on the Line and other songs. Memphis Minnie (known to her family as “Kid”) was born June 3, 1897, in Algiers Louisiana, the oldest of 13 brothers and sisters. Perhaps it’s because Memphis Minnie doesn’t fit the myth of the young, tragic, haunted blues man and she is too complex of a character to be easily marketed. Related Topics: Big Bill Bronzy Blues Jefferson Airplane Memphis Minnie On This Day Queen of the Blues 1997 Blues Legends: Memphis Minnie, Vol.  There have been a number of re-releases of her work, and her songs, especially Chauffeur Blues, When The Levee Breaks, Black Rat Swing and What’s The Matter With The Mill? It is difficult to tell whether audiences demanded different music, or if they bought what was promoted and available. Courtesy Vintage Books USA. Music (like most things) was still homemade: for entertainment, people threw parties–suppers where roast shoat, custard pies and candy sticks dipped in corn whiskey got worked off dancing the “shoofly”, the “scratch” and the “shimmy-she-wobble.” Minnie started playing banjo when she was seven years old, and was influenced by the string bands which played for dancers who partied all night and hit the fields at dawn. He seems to play with a flatpick, mostly in standard tuning. 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