More than a good woman blues guitarist and singer, Memphis Minnie holds her own against the best blues artists of her time, and her work has special resonance for today's aspiring guitarists. To place an order or for customer service, call toll-free 1-800-336-4627 or outside the United States, call 1-610-649-7565 In conjunction with the tunes I show on my homespun DVD The Blues Guitar Styles of Memphis Minnie, you should be able to figure these out with a little study.Never figured a tune out? Join Napster and access full-length songs on your phone, computer or home audio device. Despite her Southern roots and popularity, she was as much a Chicago blues artist as anyone in her day. Minnie’s voice is rarely heard, even today: it is the voice of an independent, childless woman, an artist who never puts up with abuse, and who managed to find pleasure while living through tough times. Her recordings were reissued by Chris Strachwitz on Blues Classics in the late sixties, and had a profound influence on several young musicians, particularly the late guitarist JoAnn Kelly, and Maria Muldaur who still sings Minnie’s songs today. Tough enough to endure in a hard business, she earned the respect of her peers with her solid musicianship and recorded good blues over four decades for Columbia, Vocalion, Bluebird, OKeh, Regal, Checker, and JOB. After Son Joe’s death in 1962 Minnie lived in a nursing home until she died on August 6,1973, at the age of 76. Memphis Minnie is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest artists in the Blues world and this collection highlights why. 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. Memphis Minnie (Lizzie Douglas, 1897-1973) was one of the premier blues artists of the 1930s and ‘40s. Some of Minnie’s best lyrics come from this period, like those in the autobiographical “In My Girlish Days”, (1941)which she played in G in standard tuning. The poet Langston Hughes was overwhelmed by Minnie’s “rolling mill” sounds. Complete Recorded 2 Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe. Memphis Minnie (known to her family as “Kid”) was born June 3, 1897, in Algiers Louisiana, the oldest of 13 brothers and sisters. Photo courtesy the Frank Driggs collection. She also proved to have as good taste in musical husbands as music and sustained working marriages with guitarists Casey Bill Weldon, Joe McCoy, and Ernest Lawlars. One of Memphis Minnie’s first musical partnerships was with Willie Brown, who is is better known for his association with Charlie Patton. Memphis Minnie wrote Hoodoo Lady, When the Levee Breaks and Joliet Bound. View Memphis Minnie song lyrics by popularity along with songs featured in, albums, videos and song meanings. Two of the judges, John Estes and Richard Jones hoisted the victorious Minnie on their shoulders while Kansas Joe remarked sourly “Put her down. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues". Memphis Minnie was never interested in physical labor and she began to play on the streets of Memphis and the towns surrounding Walls soon after getting her first guitar. I’ve noted where I think she’s playing-what position and what key. Minnie’s arrival in Chicago precipitated a showdown with the reigning King, Big Bill Broonzy.1. She and Brown began playing together around 1915 in the resort town of Bedford Mississippi, where tourists could take a ferryboat trip around nearby Lake Cormorant. She was born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, LA. Their marriage and musical partnership fell apart in the mid-thirties, around the same time Minnie became increasingly featured as a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist. They were playing together in a Beale street barbershop when a scout from Columbia offered to record them in New York. Lizzie Douglas was born on June 3, 1897 in Algiers, Louisiana. She was an African American blues musician and singer. One photo of the two has Minnie in an florid, drop-waisted day dress, with straightened flapper hair, looking distinctly unsteady on her feet as she grabs hold of a grim-faced Joe’s padded shoulder. Minnie and Brown would get aboard and entertain the primarily white pleasure seekers, once debarking at Biggs Arkansas with $119 in tips. The silly yet haunting “Bumble Bee Blues” became the popular song from that session– so popular that Minnie recorded several different versions of it for different labels. Download our mobile app now.   In 1933, when Big Bill Broonzy was very popular in Chicago, a blues contest between him and Memphis Minnie took place in a night club. Record companies are remarkably mono-thematic about marketing, and Minnie, like many other blues musicians, played jazz and swing tunes as well, although there are only hints of this in her 200 recorded sides. There were traveling shows of all kinds, from lowdown to grand, but they all included comedy, dancers and musicians of every type from jug bands to elegant pianists. A full-length biography, “Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues” by Paul and Beth Garon was published by DaCapo press in 1998 with a 2nd edition in 2014. Yet she remains comparatively unknown and under-studied in relation to her influence and importance to the development of blues music and guitar playing. Of consumer electronics African American blues guitarist, an astute songwriter and a good one albums and song. 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