From the earliest days of recorded blues, feminine musicians and singers have typically led the best way, placing ahead an empowering feminine standpoint that at instances had few different avenues of expression. Mamie Smith’s 1920 recording of “Crazy Blues” began what certainly grew to become a craze, because the tune’s no-nonsense lyric warned her abusive man – and by extension the world at giant – that she was standing her floor. At this time, ladies blues artists are as more likely to excel as instrumentalists as vocalists, following the instance of pioneers equivalent to Hadda Brooks, Memphis Minnie, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Listed here are just some of the excellent ladies in blues historical past.
When you’re studying, hearken to our Finest Blues Songs playlist right here.
Ma Rainey
The singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, who grew to become recognized to many by the movie adaptation of August Wilson’s play, Ma Rainey’s Black Backside, was a pivotal early blues determine, and a transitory determine between vaudeville and blues music. She started her profession as a duo along with her husband, Will “Pa” Rainey, in touring Black minstrel exhibits such because the Rabbit’s Foot Firm. Working with a full jazz band on most of her recordings, her low and “moaning” vocal fashion influenced everybody from a younger Louis Armstrong, who recorded along with her on the soon-to-be-standard “See See Rider Blues,” to Janis Joplin. She wrote a lot of her personal songs, together with the gender-defying “Prove It To Me,” and claimed to have invented the time period “blues,” which was not completely hyperbole for this “Mother of the Blues.”
Bessie Smith
Within the Nineteen Twenties, the “classic” feminine blues singers have been a nationwide phenomenon, dominating the sphere whereas guitarist/singers equivalent to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton have been simply starting to report. None was extra widespread than Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” who offered thousands and thousands of information and was so profitable that she traveled in her personal railroad automotive. The class and extravagance that she projected onstage and in her life was grounded by the stark energy and honesty of her voice, an enormous contralto that, like that of opera singer Enrico Caruso, was properly suited to early recording know-how. Not all of her songs have been blues – she scored successful with Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” – however her songs equivalent to “Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair” and “Empty Bed Blues” are a part of the blues firmament. Each Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith have been honored with U.S. Postal Service stamps.
Memphis Minnie
Lizzie “Memphis Minnie” Douglas was the primary distinguished feminine guitarist within the blues, enjoying with a virtuosic swagger that helped place her among the many hottest blues artists of the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties. She started acting on the streets of Memphis as a homeless teenager, cultivating a not-to-be-messed with persona that earned the respect of male friends equivalent to guitarist Johnny Shines, who commented, “She didn’t take no foolishness…” Shifting to Chicago in 1935, she grew to become part of the Bluebird Data roster of artists, and finally started enjoying electrical guitar, shifting towards a sound that was a precursor of rock and roll, and even recording for Checker Data, in 1952, with a younger Little Walter on harmonica. She wrote a lot of her personal materials, giving her a permanent legacy of songs equivalent to “When the Levee Breaks” (tailored by Led Zeppelin) and the much-covered “Me and My Chauffeur Blues.”
Blue Lu Barker
When New Orleans native Louise “Blue Lu” Barker moved to New York along with her husband, the guitarist Danny Barker, she was immersed within the metropolis’s thriving jazz scene. Whereas Danny secured a gig with the Cab Calloway Orchestra, the couple had one other enterprise, recording a collection of humorous and typically risqué blues songs equivalent to “Scat Skunk” and “Don’t You Make Me High” for labels that included Decca, Capitol and Apollo within the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties. Naturally, the accompaniment by Danny Barker’s Fly Cats had a New Orleans taste, and Blue Lu’s feisty voice gave the songs simply the correct tongue-in-cheek spin. In 1974, “Don’t You Make Me High” grew to become a shock hit for Maria Muldaur, who would finally report a full album of Blue Lu and Danny’s materials. The Barkers finally retired to New Orleans, the place they have been a well-liked attraction on the yearly Jazz and Heritage Pageant.
Hadda Brooks
Los Angeles-born Hadda Brooks was a proponent of the sleek West Coast blues sound, and a hellacious boogie woogie pianist. Whereas lots of the most distinguished early blues artists have been reared within the South, the place they discovered the vernacular music of their communities, Brooks studied classical music for twenty years, solely studying the boogie fashion that might initially make her well-known after her school years in Chicago. Her hit 1945 instrumental “Swingin’ the Boogie,” adopted by a collection of blues ballads, helped get the fledgling Trendy Data label off the bottom. Her diverse profession noticed her solid as a lounge singer and pianist in a number of movies, internet hosting her personal tv present, and residing in Europe and Australia for a number of years. She loved a late-career resurgence, signing with Virgin Data, which had acquired Trendy, and recording a brand new album precisely fifty years after her first launch.
Ruth Brown
Ruth Brown, “Miss Rhythm,” was the preferred feminine rhythm and blues singer of the Fifties, with a string of Atlantic Data hits that included “Teardrops From My Eyes” and “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.” Whereas her recognition waned for a number of years within the Sixties, her expertise as an entertainer finally gave her one of the sturdy careers within the blues. She gained a 1989 Tony Award as one of many three lead actresses within the Broadway musical Black and Blue (together with a 1990 Grammy win for her Blues on Broadway album), starred because the character Motormouth Maybelle within the John Waters movie Hairspray, and was one of many founders of the Rhythm and Blues Basis, which efficiently lobbied main labels to pay royalties to legacy rhythm and blues artists. Her Nineties albums on the Rounder’s Bullseye Blues label have been each Grammy nominees.
Large Mama Thornton
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was a big-voiced singer and harmonica participant best-known for her 1953 recording of “Hound Dog,” made in Los Angeles for Houston’s Peacock report label. The budding songwriting workforce of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, recognized for his or her legacy of hits with the Coasters, had offered her with a tune that befitted her powerful persona, even when it’s Elvis Presley’s smoothed-over model, which was launched a number of years later, that most individuals know. Janis Joplin cited Thornton as a significant affect, and her recording of Thornton’s tune “Ball and Chain” grew to become one in all her signature items. Within the blues revival years of the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, Thornton toured and recorded commonly. She typically wore a classy man’s swimsuit, as if to inform the world that she was to not be messed with.
Koko Taylor
Gravelly-voiced singer Koko Taylor was one of many few distinguished feminine singers in Chicago blues, the electrified model of the agricultural Mississippi fashion that coalesced within the Fifties, and that offered a template for a lot of rock and roll bands, together with the Rolling Stones. A protégé of the composer and producer Willie Dixon, Taylor recorded what many think about to be the definitive model of his tune “Wang Dang Doodle,” which rose to quantity 4 on the rhythm and blues charts in 1964. Her self-titled 1969 album collected her Chess Data output of just about all Dixon songs, with accompaniment from guitarists Buddy Man and Johnny Shines. After signing with Alligator Data in 1975, she grew to become a significant worldwide competition attraction, successful a Grammy award for her Queen of the Blues album and reaching royal standing within the blues world.
Etta James
Identified for her indelible model of the tune “At Last,” Etta James was a gospel-based singer with one of the malleable and memorable voices of the final century, and a legacy of recordings that span rhythm and blues, pop, and jazz. But, nearly every little thing she recorded was imbued with the spirit and tonality of the blues, from “Wallflower,” her first recording as a youngster (a solution tune to Hank Ballard’s “Annie Had a Baby”), to the soul and blues requirements “Tell Mama” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.” She was a member of the 1993 class of the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame inductees, a six-time Grammy winner, and one in all Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Artists of All Time. James overcame many obstacles in her lengthy profession, together with drug habit, to grow to be acknowledged as one of many best singers of our time.
Irma Thomas
“The Soul Queen of New Orleans,” Irma Thomas is among the most enduring voices of the rhythm and blues period, with a discography that spans over 50 years. Identified particularly for her early collaborations with the songwriter, arranger, and producer Allen Toussaint, together with the blues ballad “It’s Raining,” she loved her greatest hit in 1964 with the self-penned ballad “Wish Someone Would Care.” After relocating to Los Angeles throughout a fallow interval within the Sixties, Thomas returned dwelling and started performing yearly on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Pageant, cementing her popularity as each an area establishment and a world touring attraction. Starting in 1986, she started a relationship with Rounder Data and producer Scott Billington that netted two Grammy nominations, and at last a Grammy Award for Finest Up to date Blues Album for 2006’s After the Rain. A movie documentary, Irma: My Life in Music, started exhibiting on PBS stations across the U.S. in 2022.
Tina Turner
Whereas she is famend as one of many world’s best rock singers, Tina Turner has had a protracted and deep involvement with the blues. Her first husband, the Svengali-like Ike Turner, had produced what many regard as the primary rock and roll report (Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”), and he was aware of the place his blues roots may take the Ike and Tina Turner assessment, which developed as a whirlwind of soul, blues, and rock constructed round Tina’s uncooked and raspy voice. Their two albums made for the Blue Thumb label in 1969, The Hunter and Outta Season, are pure blues and soul outings, that includes Tina’s signature model of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and a number of blues requirements.
Bonnie Raitt
Earlier than the discharge of her first album in 1971, Bonnie Raitt had a singular benefit. Whereas she had been enjoying guitar for the reason that age of eight, she additionally had the chance to be taught instantly from two blues masters: the slide guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell and the singer/pianist Sippie Wallace. From McDowell, she discovered the liberty and exhilaration of the blues, in addition to the fundamentals of her masterful slide guitar approach, whereas Wallace “taught me a lot about men and what it was like for her in the business.” As she ascended to the ranks of essentially the most beloved singers, songwriters, and entertainers of our period, she carried the blues ahead as properly, typically that includes artists equivalent to Wallace, Charles Brown, and Ruth Brown as her opening acts. You may hear all of it come collectively on her recording of pianist Jon Cleary’s tune “Love on One Condition.”
Marcia Ball
Traversing the “crawfish circuit” between New Orleans and her dwelling in Austin, Marcia Ball performs music within the rollicking Texas roadhouse custom, with a deep connection to the piano heritage of the Crescent Metropolis. On the age of 21, Ball co-founded the proto-alternative nation band Freda and the Firedogs, one of many pioneering ensembles of Texas-style Americana music. When she signed with Rounder Data in 1984, she discovered her enduring voice in conventional Gulf Coast rhythm and blues. As her profession progressed, Ball blossomed as a songwriter – her most up-to-date recordings on Alligator Data characteristic nearly all authentic materials. Her 1998 album with Irma Thomas and Tracy Nelson, Sing It!, gained a Grammy nomination, and he or she has gained the Blues Basis’s Finest Keyboard award a complete of seven instances. Her followers stay up for her solo piano efficiency every year at WWOZ’s piano night time throughout the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Pageant.
Shemekia Copeland
Because the daughter of the famend Texas blues singer, songwriter, and guitar slinger Johnny Copeland, vocal powerhouse Shemekia Copeland discovered her calling at an early age, sitting in along with her dad at New York’s Cotton Membership on the age of 10. Maybe greater than any younger blues artist working at the moment, Shemekia performs many songs that tackle modern points and sensibilities – an extension of what a lot of her forebears did within the earliest days of the blues. Together with her collaborators, together with the songwriter/producers John Hahn and Will Kimbrough, and producers Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack, Oliver Wooden, and Steve Cropper, she has created a physique of labor that brings the blues proper updated.
Susan Tedeschi
Guitarist and singer Susan Tedeschi got here out of the gate working, with 1998’s massively widespread Simply Gained’t Burn album on Boston’s Tone Cool Data. If, as many imagine, blues music is in the beginning about singing, Tedeschi clearly has the present and the eagerness to succeed in her listeners on a deep degree, a lot as Bonnie Raitt did a era earlier. And, like Raitt, she fronted her band on lead guitar. The twelve-piece Tedeschi Vans Band, fashioned in partnership along with her husband and fellow guitarist Derek Vans, is among the premier touring ensembles at the moment, and maybe the closest modern embodiment of the aesthetic of the Allman Brothers Band, with Tedeschi’s vocals main the best way.
Samantha Fish
As one of many edgiest and most adventurous performers in blues at the moment, Samantha Fish continues to develop her strengths as an entertainer, a bandleader, a lead guitarist, and a deeply engaged singer. Her introduction to many followers was her cigar field slide guitar efficiency of “Shake ‘Em on Down,” and he or she has since based the Cigar Field Guitar Pageant in New Orleans. Nevertheless, her depth as a musician is mirrored in her electrifying dwell performances and in her recordings, with every of her albums exploring a special aspect of blues-related music, from the Americana leanings of Wild Coronary heart, to the Memphis soul of Kill or Be Sort, to the blues rock of Sooner.
Take heed to our Finest Blues Songs playlist right here.
