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.

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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

Jessie Mae Hemphill

2003 Offbeat Magazine Interview: JESSE MAE HEMPHILL, HIGH PRIESTESS OF HILL COUNTRY

Jesse Mae Hemphill don’t sing the blues no more. (Or so she claims). Just spiritual songs like she learned at her mama’s knee. And since a stroke left her partially paralyzed a decade ago, she can no longer play her propulsive open-tuned guitar. But when the spirit moves her, she can still “Boogie All Night Long,” like she sang on her first record, She-Wolf. Jesse Mae jammed till 5 a.m. making Dare You to Do It Again, a two-CD benefit album recorded live with a cast of dozens at Sherman Cooper’s farm in Como, MS, which was recently released on New Orleans’ 219 Records. And right now in her trailer in nearby Senatobia, she starts to boogie in her wheelchair listening to “Porch Logic Remix,” the album’s last track.

“I kinda like this,” she says, warming up to DJ Logic’s deep house spin on the clamorous fife & drum and droning guitars of the Mississippi session, remixed in a New York studio. Then her own voice loops into the mix – complete with samples of her pealing cackle, which ricochet off the walls as the drums dive deeper. “Oh lord, we’re gettin’ down now!” she hoots, lifting her lapdog Pookie on her hind legs to shake a tailfeather. “That be good for dancin, chile!” It also be good for the future of the distinctive musical styles born in the hill country of North Mississippi, where Jesse Mae Hemphill is royalty.MORE

Jessie Mae Hemphill - Standing in My Doorway Crying - (Black Snake Moan)

Jessie Mae Hemphill- I'm so Glad (dont ask me why that model was chosen for the vid)

Review of her album 'feeling good'
Listening to Jessie Mae Hemphill is to experience almost completely pure unvarnished blues. Her music is steeped in her natural familiarity with the ancient roots of Mississippi Hill country traditions while she improvised rhythmically and lyrically to contemporize her sound. A bare bones yet respectful approach to recording resulted in capturing an artist in performance at her absolute prime. While the original recording eventually did much to continue sparking an outside interest in the now famous fife and drum bands of Mississippi, best to remember there simply weren't many like Jessie Mae Hemphill to begin with, and Hemphill alone is worth the price of admission. This record is important for many reasons, but primarily because you'll never hear anyone quite like this anywhere else. This is raw, unspoiled, good-natured down home music that Hemphill created in her own distinctive style, one that sounds fresh to this very day.

Jessie Mae Hemphill was immersed in music from an early age in the remote Mississippi area of the time. Her grandfather Sid Hemphill was a blind fiddler who led a string band for over fifty years in Panola County while her aunt Rosa Lee Hill performed and recorded a few records. Jessie Mae Hemphill danced as a girl to the music her parents made at the picnics and parties in the early '40s. She began learning to play guitar at the age of eight by watching her relatives perform and she soon began to play to bass drum and snare drum in her grandfather's fife and drum band.
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