Memphis Minnie - Queen of the Blues
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Music CD Cover Artist: Memphis Minnie Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 1997-10-07 Music Label: Sony Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Queen of the Blues Album
Free Music Review: A Giant Of A Woman In A Man's World
Hit: 4 Stars
Lizzie Douglas was born in Algiers, Louisiana on June 3, 1897 and at the age of 7 moved from a rural farm to Walls in the northern portion of Mississippi. On her 8th birthday she was given her first guitar by her father and took to the instrument almost immediately, soon playing at local functions as "Kid" Douglas.
At a very young age she ran away from home, playing for change at what is now W.C. Handy Park on Beale Street in Memphis [then Church's Park], and sometime in the late 1910's or early 1920s she latched onto the stage name Memphis Minnie while playing tent shows with the Ringling Brothers Circus.
Late in the 1920s jug bands began springing up all over Memphis, and it was with various such groups that she began expanding on her guitar style. At this time she also entered a common-law, as well as a musical, relationship, with a musician named Kansas Joe McCoy, and together they recorded Bumble Bee. Unfortunately not included in this set, the hit would later be covered by Muddy Waters as Honey Bee.
What stands out immediately in this 1997 compilation from Columbia Legacy's Mojo Workin' Series, is the raw, growling power of her voice along with her intense guitar picking which put her in the same class as any of her male contemporaries.
The volume contains virtually no liner notes, but on the reverse is this paragraph which is worth repeating: "Beauty and badness ... one of the greatest of all blues guitarists [man, woman or child], Memphis Minnie also sang the blues with a style all her own. In addition to her vast talent, Minnie was strikingly good looking, flamboyant and determined to succeed in a time when women were expected to accept a secondary roll in society. In the face of unthinkable odds, Minnie earned the recognition of her mostly-male peers and became a bona-fide star in her day. Her original version of When The Levee Breaks [with Kansas Joe] would become standard of the rock vernacular when covered by Led Zeppelin at the apex of that supergroup's career."
Unfortunately, the sound quality of the tracks vary greatly, with some sounding like thay were transferred direct from 78 rpm to CD with no attempt to reduce the hiss and pop, while others offer a progressively cleaner sound [the best of which are the previously unreleased tracks 7, 17, and 18]. Two tracks [3 and 4] honour the Brown Bomber himself, Joe Louis.
Minnie, as with her idol Ma Rainey, liked to demonstrate her new-found wealth by traveling from show to show in expensive automobiles and by wearing flashy, heavy bracelets made from silver dollars.
Operating out of Chicago in the Dirty Thirties, Minnie added a bass and drums to her sound, and it was in this period that she left McCoy to marry another musician named Ernest Lawlars, known more familiarly as Little Son Joe.
They continued to cut records right into the 1950s before increasingly poor health forced her to return to Memphis in 1958 and give up the music business. Almost completely infirm from that point on, she died on August 6, 1973, in Memphis at age 76. In 1980, 20 inductees were honored by the Blues Hall Of Fame in its first year of existence. Memphis Minnie was one of them.
Hopefully, more and more of her material will be properly cleaned up and made available on CD in the not-too-distant future. She was a real gem and well worth a listen, even in these crackling tracks.