Music / blues

The rough guide to blues divas : reborn and remastered


Reviews (2)


World Music Network

2019

By

2019

"For many, the stereotypical image of the early recorded blues performer is that of a black itinerant bluesman, guitar in hand, playing in a rural landscape such as the Mississippi Delta. This perception however is slightly wide of the mark, as the first blues songs recorded were by women ... The 1920s "classic era" of recorded blues was dominated by women who lived, performed, and recorded in the cities, even if, like Ma Rainey, they brought a country feel to their music. This first wave of female artists developed a tradition which had previously only been transmitted through local folk culture and transformed it into a performing art which appealed to the broader public".


Songlines

2020 April

By

By

Nigel Williamson

2020 April

"The stereotypical image of the early blues pioneers as black itinerant males playing bottleneck guitar on the plantations of the Mississippi Delta tells only half the story. The first black blues singer ever recorded was Mamie Smith in 1920 and she launched a wave of recordings by other 'blues mamas,' accompanied not by guitar but by barrelhouse piano and brass or woodwind ... The real interest [here] lies in some of the more obscure names, all of whom were recorded in the 1920s before the Great Depression hit. Sippie Wallace's wonderful 'I'm a Mighty Tight Woman' may be familiar to some via Bonnie Raitt's 1971 cover, Victoria Spivey's great 1927 recording of `Dope Head Blues' with Lonnie Johnson on guitar, and Maggie Jones' suggestive 1924 recording of `Anybody Here Want to Try My Cabbage', on which she's accompanied by Louis Armstrong, have been widely anthologised. But tracks by the likes of Esther Bigeou and Martha Copeland in the classic 1920s jazz-blues mode and songs in a more vaudeville style by Lucille Hegamin and Lena Wilson will be little known outside the ranks of aficionados".



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