Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Blues Women!

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

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