A bit of black history month blues: Memphis Minnie

[the_future_modernes]

So I have been remiss in posting blues music, have i not been? Sorry. Let me begin to redress this balance. let me introduce ya'll to Blues Guitar Legend Memphis Minnie. The guitar work on Crazy Cryi' Blues is my favourite of the songs of hers that I've heard so far.


'Crazy Cryin' Blues' MEMPHIS MINNIE (1931) Memphis Blues Guitar Legend

Memphis Minnie: Guitar Queen by Hobemian records is an absolutely SPLENDID article about her music and influence. If you never read a damn thing else in this post, read you this.

Why has this musician who recorded over two hundred sides and was well-loved by the Black blues audiences of the '30s and '40s been comparatively ignored by later, whiter audiences? 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. She shaped a life very different from the limited possibilities offered to the women of her time. She lived a long life, was at her best in middle age, and would spit tobacco wearing a chiffon ball gown. Memphis Minnie's music remained popular over two decades because it was lyrically and instrumentally in tune with the lives of Black Americans. 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.

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. Musically there were three basic phases to her style: the duet years with Kansas Joe, the "Melrose" band sound of the late thirties and early forties, and her later electric playing. She was always a finger picker, and played in Spanish (DGDGBD), in open D (DADF#AD) and standard tunings, often using a capo. 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). 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. MORE

( Read more... )

so guess who was learning to play drums to Led Zeppelin's Kashmir today?

[the_future_modernes]

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir I'd been learning to do that for about three classes without realizing it, and today my drum teach was like, I think you are ready to play along to the radio now and I did! I mean, I made mistakes and all but I held on the to the beat of the song for the most part until our dear drummer started mixing it up! Let me tell you, my smile is big and round and and will. not. quit.

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

So when I went looking for Memphis Minnie, Led Zeppelin popped up, cause they have covered and were influenced by some of her songs. And with them came up the Zepparellas, an all women cover band. So have another song and an interview:

Led Zeppelin When The Levee Breaks by Zepparella

( So how is learning to play or sing going for the rest of you all who are doing it? )

Women drummers covering songs on youtube.

[the_future_modernes]

System of a Down-B.Y.O.B. (drum cover) by Salin* youtube account salin08

Meytal Cohen - Denial by Sevendust - Drum Cover meytalll

( Read more... )

Any youtube rock n roll covers by women that you all really like?

Black History Month: Hadda Brooks 1916-2002, pianist & composer & actress

[the_future_modernes]

We've got another queen here, darlings, and this time she's the queen of the boogie-woogie. Hadda Brookes was another genre crossing lady, did everything from boogie-woogie to jazz to blues

Hadda Brooks - That's My Desire

( Read more... )

Black History: Jessie Mae Hemphill- electric guitarist

[the_future_modernes]

Jessie Mae Hemphill - Go Back To Your Used To Be

Wikipedia sez

Jessie Mae Hemphill (October 18, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was a pioneering electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the primal, northern Mississippi country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage. She was born near Como and Senatobia, Mississippi, in northern Mississippi just east of the Mississippi Delta.

She began playing the guitar at the age of seven and also played drums in various local Mississippi fife and drum bands.

The first field recordings of her work were made by blues researcher George Mitchell in 1967 andethnomusicologist Dr. David Evans in 1973 when she was known as Jessie Mae Brooks, using the surname from a brief early marriage, but the recordings were not released. In 1978, Dr. Evans came to Memphis to teach at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis). The school founded the High Water label in 1979 to promote interest in the indigenous music ofThe South. Evans made the first high-quality field recordings of Hemphill in that year and soon after produced her first sessions for the High Water label.

...

She was unique in country blues as a female defying tradition by singing her own original material while accompanying herself on electric guitar and playing tambourine with her foot. She employs a folk-blues open tuning style with a hypnotic drone in her guitar playing instead of relying on standard, 12-bar blues styles. She occasionally was accompanied on a second guitar by producer Evans.MORE

( Read more... )

The Like Me's in Music Love

[stoneself]