Memphis Minnie

[ardcarp]

Hope you don't mind my dropping in, folks, but I was quite impressed with a feature about Memphis Minnie on Woman's Hour today. There were quite a few recordings played, and her voice and technique were distinctive to say the least.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05rnx7k#auto

[Scroll past the nuns.]

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Scroll past the nuns.]

Now there's an invitation you don't see every day!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Now there's an invitation you don't see every day!

Ms Minnie was/is truly majestic. "In my girlish ways" is life affirming.

Talking of "nuns" and why not, I watched "Les Novices" (Fr. 1970) last night in which Brigitte Bardot plays a novice nun who does a runner to Paris and is adopted/guided by a cheery prostitute. If you can get past Brigitte having three inches of eye shadow and perfect hair even as a novice, its an amusing outing. Nun better.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

The double CD on Proper has a good selection of her recordings. I find MM's recordings to be really curious as the earlier tracks are clearly in the Country Blues tradition whereas the recordings she made in Chicago later on are obviously a precursor to a lot of the more electric / amplified Blues put out by labels like Chess. In fact, I think her recordings are more typical of those musicians who moved to the North as opposed to those who remained in the rural South. The better recordings are excellent and she seemed to tackle some pretty hard-hitting topics within her music that never got covered by male artists. There can't be many blues about STD's, for example. I don't think her approach is for the faint-hearted and you get the impression of a woman really singing her mind.

Over the course of 2 CD's and 50 tracks, the music does get a bit samey yet you could also argue this with Leroy Carr's music. I think that there is a "hipster" element in MM's music too albeit it is probably a bit more blue collar than the likes of Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan or even Carr. Her voice can have an almost strident quality when she sings the more declamatory material. The downside of her work is the use of double entendre which I find a bit tedious ("The mills broke down" and "Dirty mother for you" ) although, that said, "me and my chauffeur " is my favourite MM track.

I think she was an honest performer and her guitar playing gutsy. The liner notes in the Proper set are little help with who is playing what and this gets a bit confusing as her husbands also tended to be blues guitarists who partnered her. Some of the tracks with "jazz musicians" are a bit uneven - obscure names from the parochial Chicago scene of the 1940's.

[ardcarp]

and her guitar playing gutsy.

...and maybe not wholly in tune (in one of the tracks I heard) but I guess that's part of the charm. I gather she left home at thirteen and just began singing and playing on the street. She must have seen some life in the raw, perhaps explaining the hard-hitting topics.

[johncorrigan]

Hope you don't mind my dropping in, folks, but I was quite impressed with a feature about Memphis Minnie on Woman's Hour today. There were quite a few recordings played, and her voice and technique were distinctive to say the least.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05rnx7k#auto

[Scroll past the nuns.]

Thanks for that, ardcarp. I know it's been posted before, but I love Langston Hughes' description of a Minnie gig from '42. 'Memphis Minnie's music is harder than the coins that roll across the counter.'

http://www.ralphmag.org/CB/memphis-minnie.html

[Ian Thumwood]

...and maybe not wholly in tune (in one of the tracks I heard) but I guess that's part of the charm. I gather she left home at thirteen and just began singing and playing on the street. She must have seen some life in the raw, perhaps explaining the hard-hitting topics.

I hadn't noticed that her guitar was out of tune but the recording quality isn't too great on a number of the recordings. Guitar playing in the 20's / 30's in fascinating as the rhythmic feel by many players on this instrument is more mature than many contemporary jazz musicians. This is particularly true with blues players. The blues players like Blind lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton often appear to produce phrases which seem modern (as much as you can tell from the scratchy sound quality) whereas the more Ragtime influenced players like Blind Blake and Blind Willie McTell don't play with the same kind of drive. I think the duos between Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang seem completely out of their time in the assured and leisurely phrasing.

I've been listening to a lot of Eddie Lang today and would have to say that he seems far more assured than many of the other musicians he was associated with. On the compilation I have, only Lonnie Johnson, Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman seem to match him. He also seems to have a pretty refined harmonic palette.