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. Her recordings with Son Joe are in duet style, with piano, bass or drums added on some sessions. Despite her Southern roots and popularity, she was as much a Chicago blues artist as anyone in her day. Their guitar duets span the spectrum of African-American folk and popular music, including spirituals, comic dialogs, and old-time dance pieces, but Memphis Minnie's best work consisted of deep blues like "Moaning the Blues." African, European and Indigenous traditions had begun to coalesce into the blues in the South much earlier than the ’20s, but our perception of history is usually based on recorded history: what gets recorded, written about and incorporated into our accepted common memory. During this period Minnie began playing much less; the guitar no longer combines bass, treble and rhythm parts, leaving that to the other instruments, and instead starts to sound more like what we think of as blues today, with soulful bends and well-placed twangs on songs like the swing influenced “Good Morning”(1936) and “Hot Stuff”(1937), both of which she played in standard tuning. Master finger-style guitar player. Queen of the Blues 1997 Blues Legends: Memphis Minnie, Vol. Memphis Minnie (known to her family as “Kid”) was born June 3, 1897, in Algiers Louisiana, the oldest of 13 brothers and sisters. Terrell) were seldom recorded playing blues. Memphis Minnie discography and songs: Music profile for Memphis Minnie, born 3 June 1897. Paul and Beth Garon include a fascinating photo of Minnie’s set list in “Woman with Guitar”, that includes songs like “Marie”, “Woody Woodpecker”, Lady Be Good”, “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons” and “How High The Moon.”  Son Joe and Minnie played until their health broke down. Their sessions in May and December of 1941 fused her more urban sound, (for example her vocal delivery on “Nothin’ In Ramblin”), with Son Joe’s back-up style, which combined big chords with an insistent beat to create a chunky swing feel. ~ Barry Lee Pearson. Memphis Minnie. 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. Memphis Minnie (born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973) was an American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter from the late 1920s to the 1950s, one of the most influential country blues musicians to have ever recorded. They mixed blues with pop tunes, her favorite cover being “What Makes You Do Me Like You Do Do Do”. Memphis Minnie, Black Bob, Bill Settles / Memphis Minnie: Memphis Minnie, Black Bob, Bill Settles / Memphis Minnie - Joe Louis Strut / He's In The Ring (Doing That Same Old Thing) (Shellac, 10") Vocalion (2) 03046: US: 1935: Sell This Version by Del Rey copyright 1997 Hobemian Records, (a version of this article was originally published in Acoustic Guitar Magazine 1997). These sides were never issued by Regal but can now be heard on the Biograph CD Memphis Minnie: Early Rhythm and Blues 1949. That version, with its laid-back, behind-the-beat, jug-driven groove, points the way to the Memphis Beat later perfected at Stax Records. In the studio Minnie worked with pianist Black Bob, drummer Fred Williams and other instrumentalists, from the occasional trumpeter to lap-steel and mandolin. Composers: Kansas Joe McCoy - Memphis Minnie McCoy. As the realities of boom and bust economics became universal after the stock market crash of 1929, record companies began to seek out rural, guitar based music. She can walk”. Minnie settled Memphis in the early ’20s. Many of her hits are still standards in more than one genre, like “What’s The Matter With The Mill?”, “Chauffeur Blues” or “When The Levee Breaks”. Minnie worked the streets and parks with Jed Davenport’s Beale Street Jug Band, and her guitar playing was influenced by the popular jug band musician Frank Stokes, who’s guitar duets with Dan Sane are very similar to Minnie’s early style. 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. She recorded her most popular song, “Bumble Bee Blues,” at her first session in 1929 and re-recorded the song repeatedly throughout her career, including a session with The Memphis Jug Band. Music (like most things) was still homemade: for entertainment, people threw parties–suppers where roast shoat, custard pies and candy sticks dipped in corn whiskey got worked off dancing the “shoofly”, the “scratch” and the “shimmy-she-wobble.” Minnie started playing banjo when she was seven years old, and was influenced by the string bands which played for dancers who partied all night and hit the fields at dawn. She was an African American blues musician and singer. Memphis Minnie covered Bumble Bee and When the Sun Goes Down - Part 2. Why has this musician , with her enormous body of recordings, who was well-loved by the Black blues audiences of the ’30s and ’40s been comparatively ignored by later, whiter audiences? Her recorded output is not necessarily the same as her live set. Minnie toured a great deal in the ’30s, mostly in the south. In the same session Son Joe sang “Black Rat Swing”, and sounded so much like Minnie he must have borrowed her chewing tobacco. Sometimes a blues musician got paid with an apple or a can of sardines, sometimes she made as much as a hundred dollars. The companies began to seek out and record other singers in the same vaudevillian genre. Minnie’s fantastically vituperative vocal delivery on some songs may be due in part to having a cheek full of Copenhagen. Perhaps it was cheaper to record a country boy’s guitar than an established vaudeville professional. He's In the Ring (Doin' the Same Old Thing) Memphis Minnie. 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. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues". View Memphis Minnie song lyrics by popularity along with songs featured in, albums, videos and song meanings. Delivery on some songs may be due in Part to having a cheek full Copenhagen... 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