Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Blues Women!

Rosetta Tharpe - Short History

Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 October 9, 1973) was a pioneering Gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock accompaniment. She became the first great recording star of Gospel music in the late 1930s and also became known as the "original soul sister" of recorded music.

Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her inspirational music of 'light' in the 'darkness' of the nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, her witty, idiosyncratic style also left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists, such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the world of pop music, she never left gospel music.MORE

Sister Rosetta Tharpe Didn't It Rain



( Read more... )

VanessaDavisBand.mp4



( Read more... )

Koko Taylor montage



Koko Taylor & Willie Dixon - Insane Asylum



( Read more... )

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... )

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... )