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Jus' Blues Museum mission:
We must go back to our roots in order to move forward. Our mission is to reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward. Whatever we have lost, forgotten, forgone or been stripped of, can be reclaimed, revived, preserved and perpetuated. |
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THE KINGS & QUEENS
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Walter Davis, born on a farm in Grenada, Mississippi was a blues singer, pianist and songwriter who was one of the most prolific blues recording artists between the early 1930s and early 1950s.
He started singing with pianist Roosevelt Sykes and guitarist Henry Townsend. In 1940, he had a hit with his recording of "Come Back Baby", a song later recorded by Lowell Fulson, Ray Charles, and many others. Davis recorded prolifically for Victor and Bluebird, making over 150 recordings between 1930 and 1952. |
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Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton , born in Ariton, Alabama was a blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies.
Thornton's music was also influential in shaping American popular music. The lack of appreciation she received for "Hound Dog" and "Ball 'n' Chain" as they became popular hits is a reflection of an era of racial segregation in the United States, both physically and in the music industry. |
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Born Sylvester Thompson in Holly Springs, Mississippi, he is a singer, songwriter, producer and guitarist. Johnson sang and played with blues artists Magic Sam, Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells and Howlin' Wolf in the 1950s.
Johnson has been one of the most sampled artists, largely from "Different Strokes" and "Is It Because I'm Black". He feels passionately that taking music from an original artist without proper compensation constitutes theft and has successfully sued other artists for copyright infringement. |
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Ida Cox, born Ida M. Prather, in Toccoa, Habersham County, Georgia was a blues singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings. She was billed as "The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues". Cox's early experience with touring troupes included stints with Black travelling minstrel shows on the Theater Owners Booking Association vaudeville circuit: the Florida Orange Blossom Minstrels, the Silas Green Show, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels.
The Rabbit Foot Minstrels, organized by F. S. Wolcott and based after 1918 in Port Gibson, Mississippi, were important not only for the development of Cox’s performing career but also for launching the careers of her idols Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. |
Abraham John Bond Jr., known as Son Bonds was born in Brownsville, Tennessee. He was a country blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a working associate of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon, the music to one of Bonds's songs, 'Back and Side Blues' (1934), became a standard blues melody when Sonny Boy Williamson I used it in his classic "Good Morning, School Girl"." The best known of Bonds's other works are "A Hard Pill to Swallow" and "Come Back Home."
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Martha Copeland was a classic female blues singer who recorded 34 songs between 1923 and 1928. She was promoted by Columbia Records as "Everybody's Mammy”. Copeland started her recording career with Okeh in 1923 and appeared in a vaudeville revue, Shuffle Along. Her output included blues standards, mirror images of current popular tracks ("Soul and Body," in response to Coleman Hawkins's "Body and Soul"), and comedic numbers ("I Ain't Your Hen, Mr. Fly Rooster" and "When the Wind Make Connection with Your Dry Goods").
Her more notable accompanists on various recordings included Rube Bloom, Eddie Heywood, Lou Hooper, Cliff Jackson, James P. Johnson, and Louis Metcalf (all on piano), Bob Fuller (clarinet), and Bubber Miley (trumpet). |
Ed Bell was born on the Davis Plantation, near Fort Deposit, Alabama, a Piedmont blues and country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. His debut recording, of his own songs "Mamlish Blues" and "The Hambone Blues," was part of a four-song session for Paramount Records in Chicago in 1927. Bell stands as the most influential Alabama artist in pre-war blues recordings.
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Born Ann Swanigan in Memphis, Tennessee, Queen Ann Hines has been living down South all her life. She started singing at the age of five just around the house, and then entered a talent contest when she was twelve, and won the contest. Professionally she has done tours and worked with J. Blackfoot, Soul Children, Lynn White, Bobby Womack, Mavis Staples, Al Green, Randy Brown and a lot of local talents in Memphis.
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Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden, born in New Orleans, was a band leader, composer and cornetist and is regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of New Orleans rag-time music, or Jass, which later came to be known as jazz. He was known as King Bolden and his band was popular in New Orleans from about 1900 until 1907
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Ada Scott Brown, born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, was a blues singer. She is best known for her recordings of "Ill Natural Blues", "Break o' Day Blues", her recording with Bennie Moten in 1926, "Evil Mama Blues" is possibly the earliest recording of Kansas City jazz.
Brown was a founding member of the Negro Actors Guild of America in 1936. She worked at the London Palladium and on Broadway in the late 1930s. She sang with Fats Waller in the film Stormy Weather in 1943. She also appeared in Harlem to Hollywood, accompanied by Harry Swannagan. |
Scott Joplin was a composer and pianist, born in Northeast Texas. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime Writers". During his brief career, he wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897
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Madlyn Davis was a classic female blues singer, active as a recording artist in the late 1920s. Among her best-known tracks are "Kokola Blues" and "It's Red Hot". She was a contemporary of better-known recording artists, such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, Mozelle Alderson, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, and Bertha "Chippie" Hill.
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Linsey Alexander, born in Holly Springs, Mississippi is a blues songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist. He has been a fixture in Chicago North Side clubs for nearly two decades and has played with numerous blues musicians, including Buddy Guy, A.C. Reed, Magic Slim, and B.B. King. His album Been There Done That, released in 2012, was rated the best blues CD of the yea
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Bessie Brown, also known as "The Original" Bessie Brown, born in Marysville, Ohio was a blues, jazz, and cabaret singer. She sometimes recorded under the pseudonyms Sadie Green, Caroline Lee, and possibly Helen Richards. Brown took to the stage as a cabaret performer, primarily on the East Coast. Brown was active as a recording artist from 1925 to 1929
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John Henry Barbee born in Henning, Tennessee , was a blues singer and guitarist. Barbee toured in the 1930s throughout the American South, singing and playing slide guitar. He teamed up with Big Joe Williams and, later, with Sunnyland Slim in Memphis, Tennessee. Travelling down to Mississippi, he met Sonny Boy Williamson and played with him off and on for several years.
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Trudy Lynn, born Lee Audrey Nelms in the Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas is a blues singer and songwriter, whose recorded work has been released on numerous albums. Her album, Royal Oaks Blues Cafe, reached number one in the Billboard Top Blues Albums Chart in September 2014. Her current album, I’ll Sing The Blues For You, has charted Top 5.
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Kenny Neal born in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a blues guitar player, harmonica player, singer and songwriter. Neal comes from a musical family and has often performed with his brothers in his band. Neal preserves the blues sound of his native south Louisiana, as befits someone who learned from Slim Harpo, Buddy Guy, and his father, harmonica player Raful Neal.
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Bonnie Lee born as Jessie Lee Frealls in Bunkie, Louisiana, and raised in Beaumont, Texas, was A Chicago blues singer. Known as "The Sweetheart of the Blues", she is best remembered for her lengthy working relationships with Sunnyland Slim and Willie Kent. She toured with the Famous Georgia Minstrels, meeting both Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Big Mama Thornton.
In Chicago Backed by Willie Kent and the Gents, she became a regular performer at B.L.U.E.S., a noted Chicago club, for many years. |
Vasti Jackson, originally from McComb, Mississippi is rooted in the music of Mississippi, and Louisiana. Vasti Jackson recorded on B.B. King’s Grammy award winning Blues Summit in 1994. In the 1980s and early 1990s Vasti was session guitarist for Malaco Records (Mississippi) and Alligator Records (Chicago). Musical director, and guitarist ZZ Hill, Johnnie Taylor, Denise LaSalle, Little Milton, Bobby Bland, and Swamp queen Katie Webster. He also worked with gospel greats – including the Williams Brothers, The Jackson Southernaires, and Daryl Coley.
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Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter.
A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved holding a right-handed guitar upside down. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking" |
Lonnie Brooks, born Lee Baker Jr. in Dubuisson, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, is a blues singer and guitarist. One of the premier touring blues musicians, Brooks tours in the U.S. and Europe. His sons, Ronnie Baker Brooks and Wayne Baker Brooks, are also full-time blues entertainers, fronting their own bands and touring extensively in the U.S. and abroad. Wayne Baker Brooks also plays in his father's band. The Brooke’s are frequent guest performers at each other's shows and have booked appearances as the Brooks Family.
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Nonprofit executive Marie Dixon was born on August 1, 1937 in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1956, Marie met the legendary blues musician, producer, and her future husband, Willie Dixon. In the late 1970s, Willie had a vision for a blues foundation, and, in 1984, he established the organization as the “Blues Heaven Foundation,” a non-profit designed to promote the blues and to provide scholarships, royalty recovery advice, and emergency assistance to blues musicians in need. After her husband’s death in 1992, Dixon purchased the building of the legendary Chess Studios in Chicago in 1993 in order to house the Blues Heaven Foundation. She then went on to serve as the foundation’s president. Through the efforts of Dixon, her daughter Shirli, and others, the Blues Heaven Foundation and museum finally moved into the restored Chess Studios in 1997.
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James Armstrong, born Los Angeles, California, is a soul blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. His songs have been used in the soundtracks of three films; Speechless, Hear No Evil, and The Florentine. Inspired by Albert King and Robert Cray, his musical education included backing musicians such as Albert Collins, Big Joe Turner, Keb' Mo', Coco Montoya, Roy Brown, Chaka Khan and Smokey Wilson.
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Sista Monica Parker born in Gary Indiana was a blues, gospel and soul singer, songwriter, and record producer.
Her influences included Al Green, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke. She wrote most of her material, and released eleven albums in her lifetime. Parker shared the stage with a number of musicians over her performing lifetime including B.B. King, India Arie, Gladys Knight, Etta James, Koko Taylor, Susan Tedeschi, Elvin Bishop, Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers, the Neville Brothers, and John Lee Hooker. |
Robert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob, was born in Walnut Grove, Georgia and was an early American Piedmont blues musician. His nickname was derived from his working as a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the two extant photographs of him show him playing a guitar and wearing a full-length white apron and cook's hat.
During his short career Hicks recorded 68 78-rpm sides. His first, "Barbecue Blues", was recorded in March 1927. The record quickly sold 15,000 copies and made him a best-selling artist for Columbia's race series |
Ethel Waters an American blues, jazz and gospel singer and an actress, requently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, but she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.
Her best-known recordings include "Dinah," "Stormy Weather," "Taking a Chance on Love," "Heat Wave," "Supper Time," "Am I Blue?" and "Cabin in the Sky," as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was also the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award, in 1962. She recorded with Black Swan Records from 1921 through 1923. In early 1924, Paramount bought the Black Swan label, and she stayed with Paramount through that year. She first recorded for Columbia Records in 1925, achieving a hit with "Dinah,". Soon after, she started working with Pearl Wright, and together they toured in the South. In 1924, Waters played at the Plantation Club on Broadway. She also toured with the Black Swan Dance Masters. With Earl Dancer, she joined what was called the "white time" Keith Vaudeville Circuit, a traditional white-audience based vaudeville circuit performing for white audiences and combined with screenings of silent movies. They received rave reviews in Chicago and earned the unheard of salary of $1,250 in 1928. In 1929, Waters and Pearl Wright arranged the unreleased Harry Akst song "Am I Blue?," which then appeared in the movie On with the Show and became a hit and her signature song. |
Black Ace was the most frequently used stage name of the American Texas blues musician born Babe Kyro Lemon Turner in Hughes Springs, Texas, who was also known as B.K. Turner, Black Ace Turner, Babe Turner and Buck Turner.
In 1937, Turner recorded six songs for Chicago's Decca Records in Dallas, including the blues song "Black Ace". In the same year, he started a radio show on KFJZ in Fort Worth, using the cut as a theme song, and soon assumed the name. |
Katherine Henderson a classic female blues singer. Most of her recording sessions took place in Long Island City, New York, in October and November 1928.
Henderson was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the niece of Eva Taylor and Clarence Williams. As a child, she performed in minstrel shows and on the vaudeville circuit. In the late 1920s, she recorded around ten songs, which were issued by Brunswick Records and QRS Records. In 1927, Henderson starred in Bottomland, a New York–based stage musical written by Williams. The show included the song "Take Your Black Bottom Dance Outside", which Henderson recorded. |
Johnnie Alexander Bassett, born in Marianna, Florida, was a Detroit-based electric blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Working for decades primarily as a session musician, by the 1990s Bassett had his own backing band and released seven albums in his lifetime. He backed The Miracles at Chess Records, working on their debut single, "Got a Job" (1958). In concerts while in Detroit, Bassett played on stage alongside John Lee Hooker, Alberta Adams, Lowell Fulson and Dinah Washington.
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Papa Charlie Jackson was an early blues man and song writer who accompanied himself with a banjo, a guitar, or a ukulele. His recording career began in 1924. Jackson was an influential figure in blues music. He was the first self-accompanied blues musician to make records. He was one of the first musicians of the hokum genre, which uses comic, often sexually suggestive lyrics and lively, dance able rhythms. He wrote or was the first to record several songs that became blues standards, including "Spoonful" and "Salty Dog".
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Bobby Rush, Born Emmett Ellis, Jr. in Homer, Louisiana, is a blues guitarist, harmonica player, composer and singer. His 50 plus year career includes, becoming the first blues artist to perform in China, earning him the title “International Dean of the Blues.” He was later named Friendship Ambassador to the Great Wall of China after performing the largest concert ever held at that site. In addition, Rush has toured in most major markets around the world, including Sydney, Australia; Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Shanghai, China; Johannesburg, South Africa; Berlin, Germany; Rome, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Lucerne, Switzerland; New York, New York; Chicago, Illinois; Memphis, Tennessee; Los Angeles, California; to Jackson, Mississippi.
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Blind John Davis, born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was a blues, jazz and boogie-woogie pianist and singer. He is best remembered for his recordings, including "A Little Every Day" and "Everybody's Boogie". In his early years Davis backed Merline Johnson, and by his mid-twenties he was a well-known and reliable accompanying pianist. Between 1937 and 1942, he recorded with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Tampa Red, Red Nelson, Merline Johnson, and others, playing on many recordings of that time. He toured Europe with Broonzy in 1952, the first blues pianist to do so. In later years Davis toured and recorded frequently in Europe, where he enjoyed a higher profile than in America.
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Eddie King was born Edward Lewis Davis Milton in Talladega, Alabama. A Chicago blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, King learned basic guitar riffs from watching from outside the window of local blues clubs. He was inspired by the playing of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. He grew up playing alongside Luther Allison, Magic Sam, Junior Wells, Eddie C. Campbell, and Freddie King. He first recorded under the tutelage of Willie Dixon and, in 1960, played on several tracks recorded by Sonny Boy Williamson II.
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Bill Coday was born in Coldwater Mississippi and As a young man to Chicago, Illinois, where he was discovered by Denise LaSalle, who signed Coday to her Crajon label, and introduced him to Willie Mitchell of Memphis, Tennessee. Willie Mitchell agreed to work with Coday, and the Mitchell-Coday team produced songs such as "Sixty Minute Teaser", "I Get High on Your Love", "You're Gonna Want Me", "I'm Back to Collect", and "Get Your Lie Straight".
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Theodore R. "Ted" Bogan, born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, was an American country blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He learned to play a finger-picking style of guitar in his adolescence and is best known for his work with Howard Armstrong and Carl Martin. He had a career that spanned over 50 years. His finger-picking guitar work was much admired and Bogan played in a variety of string bands most of his lifetime
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Big Maceo Merriweather Born in Newnan, Georgia, he was a self-taught pianist who, in the 1920s, moved to Detroit, Michigan, to begin his music career. In 1941 he moved to Chicago, where he made the acquaintance of Tampa Red. Red introduced him to Lester Melrose of Bluebird Records, who signed Merriweather to a recording contract.
His first record was "Worried Life Blues" (1941), which became a blues hit and remained his signature piece. Other classic piano blues recordings followed, such as "Chicago Breakdown", "Texas Stomp", and "Detroit Jump". His piano style was developed from players like Leroy Carr and Roosevelt Sykes and from the boogie-woogie style of Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. His style influenced practically every postwar blues pianist of note. His most famous song, "Worried Life Blues", is a staple of the blues repertoire. He in turn influenced other musicians, such as Henry Gray, who credited Merriweather with helping him launch his career as a blues pianist. |
Walter Horton, better known as Big Walter Horton or Walter "Shakey" Horton, born in Horn Lake, Mississippi, was a blues harmonica player. A quiet, unassuming, shy man, he is remembered as one of the premier harmonica players in the history of blues. Willie Dixon once called Horton "the best harmonica player I ever heard."
Horton was active in the Chicago blues scene during the 1960s, as blues music gained popularity with white audiences. From the early 1960s onward, he recorded and appeared frequently as a sideman with Eddie Taylor, Johnny Shines, Johnny Young, Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon and many others. He toured extensively, usually as a backing musician, and in the 1970s he performed at blues and folk music festivals in the U.S. and Europe, frequently with Dixon's Chicago Blues All-Stars. |
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry, born in St. Louis, Missouri, is a guitarist, singer and songwriter and is one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybelline"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career
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Louis Thomas Jordan was one of the most successful Black musicians of the 20th century, he had at least four million-selling hits during his career. After Duke Ellington and Count Basie, Jordan was probably the most popular and successful African-American bandleader of his time.
Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, but he became famous as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of jump blues, a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Jordan's band also pioneered the use of the electric organ. |
Jimmy Rushing lent his distinctive tenor voice to many of jazz’s great big bands, and he then emerged equally powerfully as solo artist. He personified the evolution of Black music from its blues roots to jazz expression, and brought a unique sensitivity and understanding to the lyrics he so joyfully sang.
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Tom Delaney was an African-American blues and jazz songwriter, pianist and singer, who wrote a number of popular songs, mainly in the 1920s. His work was recorded by many of the more fashionable singers and musicians of the period and later times, including Lillyn Brown, Lucille Hegamin, Ethel Waters, Earl Hines, Count Basie, Bix Beiderbecke, Big Joe Williams, Clara Smith, Alberta Hunter, Clarence Williams, James P. Johnson, Woody Herman, Bukka White, Toots Thielemans, and Dinah Washington. Although known primarily as a writer of other performers songs, Delaney recorded a small amount of his own material.
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Walter E. “Furry” Lewis was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter and was one of the first of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given new opportunities to record during the folk blues revival of the 1960s. Lewis made his first recordings for Vocalion Records in Chicago in 1927. A year later he recorded for Victor Records at the Memphis Auditorium, in a session with the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, and others. He again recorded for Vocalion in Memphis in 1929. The tracks were mostly blues but included two-part versions of "Casey Jones" and "John Henry." He sometimes fingerpicked and sometimes played with a slide. He recorded many successful records in the late 1920s, including "Kassie Jones", "Billy Lyons & Stack-O-Lee" and "Judge Harsh Blues" (later called "Good Morning Judge").
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Johnny Adams, was a blues, jazz and gospel singer, known as "The Tan Canary" for the multi-octave range of his singing voice, his swooping vocal mannerisms and falsetto. His biggest hits were his versions of "Release Me" and "Reconsider Me" in the late 1960s. In 1983, he signed with Rounder Records, for which he recorded nine critically acclaimed albums produced by Scott Billington, beginning with From the Heart in 1984. These records encompassed a wide range of jazz, blues and R&B styles and highlighted Adams's voice. The albums included tributes to the songwriters Percy Mayfield and Doc Pomus. The jazz-influenced Good Morning Heartache included the work of composers like George Gershwin and Harold Arlen. Other albums in this series are Room with a View of the Blues (1988), Walking on a Tightrope (1989), and The Real Me (1991). These recordings earned him a number of awards, including a W.C. Handy Award. He also toured internationally, with frequent trips to Europe, and worked and recorded with such musicians as Aaron Neville, Harry Connick Jr., Lonnie Smith, and Dr. John.
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R&B star and Houston, TX native Leon Haywood (February 11, 1942 – April 6, 2016), started out accompanying Bluesman Guitar Slim. He later played piano with Big Jim McNeely and Sam Cooke. When Leon went solo, he became a soul singer, songwriter and record producer who had hits like It's Got to Be Mellow (1967), Don't Push Don't Force It (1980), I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You (1975) and many others
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Sax Mallard, was a Chicago-based jazz saxophonist and bandleader, born Oett Mallard in Chicago in 1915. As a teenager he was taken by the saxophone and decided that this was his calling. He toured with a version of the Black musical revue "Shuffle Along" which made a star out of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. In the nineteen thirties he spent some time with the local band of Kenny McVey. During the first half of the decade of the nineteen forties, Mallard was with many of the touring units that criss crossed the country. He spent some time in military service during the war and then in 1946 he began playing urban rhythm & blues with a combo led by "Jump" Jackson based in Chicago.
With the Jackson unit Mallard recorded his first sides backing blues singer and pianist Roosevelt Sykes, first for RCA Victor and then for Columbia Records. He also did some sessions behind guitarist and blues singer Tampa Red late in 1946 Mallard played on an interesting session backing Roosevelt Sykes for Specialty Records with Sykes recording under the name "The Blues Man". At that time Mallard began to arrange some of the tunes that were recorded. At the end of 1946 mallard was a member of Big Bill Broonzy's Rhythm Band along with trumpeter Johnny Morton, Bill Casimir on tenor, Charles Belcher on piano, Ransom Knowling on bass, and Judge Riley on drums. The result was "I Can Fix It" and "Old Man Blues" on Columbia Records. In 1947 mallard continued with the "Jump" Jackson combo backing vocalist Melrose Colbert, Arbee Stidham, Bill Broonzy again, Andrew Tibbs, Washboard Sam, and Sykes. During the last few days of 1947 Sax Mallard had the first date in the recording studio under his name as leader. The side was released by Aristocrat Records (the forerunner of Chess) on the tunes "The Mojo" and "Let's Love Again" with vocal by Jimmy Bowman.. The following year had Mallard recording under his name as leader with vocalist Andrew Tibbs on "He's Got Her And Gone" on Aristocrat. In late 1948 his combo backed The Dozier Boys vocal group on the tunes "She Only Fools With Me" and "St. Louis Blues" on Aristocrat . In 1949 he began by backing vocalist Grant Jones for Coral, then Arbee Stidham and Eddie Penigar (known as "Sugarman") for RCA Victor. Mallard appeared as part of the studio band on Al Benson's early TV show during 1950, and in the first days of 1951 had the first release for the new Checker label owned by the Chess Brothers - "Slow Caboose" and "Let's Give Love A Chance" with vocal by Osie Johnson on . Later in the year he was part of Bill Broonzy's Big Little Orchestra on Mercury. Sax Mallard's next recording was "Teen Town Strut" and "I'm Yours" on Checker . In late 1952 Mallard did some session work for Chicago independent label Chance Records backing vocalists Big Bertha and Lou Blackwell. In March of 1953 Mallard backed vocalist Mitzi Mars on "Roll 'Em" and "I'm Glad" on Checker # 773. In June Mallard backed the vocal group The Coronets on their famous recording of "Nadine" (b/w "I'm All Alone") on Chess # 1549, and the followup "Baby's Coming Home" and "Should I?" on # 1553. Mallard continued to show his versatility with leading the band behind "Guitar Slim" (Eddie Jones) Specialty session, and The Moonglows "Foolish Me" / "Slow Down" on Chess # 1598 and "Starlite" / "In Love" on # 1605. In late 1955 Mallard did a session with drummer Red Saunders that was produced by radio d.j. Al Benson for Parrot Records and then stopped recording for a number of years. In the early nineteen sixties he played and recorded in the backing combo for Bobby Saxton and Piney Woods for Bea & Baby Records, and blues veterans Sunnyland Slim and Roosevelt Sykes. Oett "Sax" Mallard did his last recording session with King Kolax (also his last session), Robert Jr. Lockwood, and drummer Fred Below in 1970 for Chicago blues preservation label Delmark. He spent twenty five years as an employee of the Chicago Department of Parks and for years was a union official of the American Federation of Musicians. |
Granville McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and received his nickname during the early years, when he was pushing his older brother, Brownie McGhee, who was stricken with polio, in a wagon with a stick. Granville began playing the guitar when he was thirteen years old. After his freshmen year, Granville dropped out of high school and worked with his father at Eastman Kodak. In 1940, Granville quit his job and moved to Portsmouth, Virginia, and then he relocated to New York. There he entered the military in 1942 and served in the Army during World War II. In the military, Granville often played his guitar. One of the songs, that McGhee was best known for, was "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee"
This blues, was covered by Jerry Lee Lewis and Mike Bloomfield's Electric Flag. The song lent its name to the alcoholic fruit drink, spodi. In 1946, Granville and Brownie McGhee collaborated and modified the song into a clean cut version for Harlem Records. The song was released a year later in January 1947 at the price of 49 cents. The song did not get much airplay time until two years later, when Granville recreated the song for Atlantic Records. As a result, it rose to Number 2 on the Billboard R&B chart, where it stayed for 4 weeks, spending almost half a year on the charts overall. His songs attracted countless covers over the years. The first cover was by Lionel Hampton featuring Sonny Parker, then Wynonie Harris, and lastly, Loy Gordon & His Pleasant Valley Boys with their hillbilly-bop rendition. His song "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee" maintained its popularity throughout the 1950s by various artists, including Malcolm Yelvington in 1954, Johnny Burnette in 1957, and Jerry Lee Lewis in 1959. McGhee continued to make records for Atlantic and created popular songs such as "Tennessee Waltz Blues", "Drank Up All the Wine Last Night", "Venus Blues", "Let's Do It", and "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" but his music career overall was not successful. McGhee moved from Atlantic to Essex to create a record called "My Little Rose". The record failed so he moved to King in 1953. There he recorded a number of blues songs such a "Whiskey, Women and Loaded Dice", "Head Happy With Wine", "Jungle Juice", "Six to Eight", "Double Crossin' Liquor", "Dealin' from the Bottom", and "Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter". |
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was a blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
He was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for Library of Congress and Fisk University. In addition to his early influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he became an inspiration to John Hammond, Alan Wilson (of Canned Heat), Bonnie Raitt, The White Stripes,Dallas Green and John Mooney. In 1927 at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, Son heard one of his drinking companions playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude to blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best-known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' The Blues". Another source of inspiration was Reuben Lacy, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 and for Paramount Records. In early 1930, Son was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale, and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta Blues, Charley Patton was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base in the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He then observed Son's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight, and invited him to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. Son formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. |
Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones (August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963), was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and moved to Chicago as a child. She was a blues singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s and the "Queen of the Blues".
After winning a talent contest at the age of 15, she began performing in clubs. By 1941-42 she was performing in such Chicago clubs as Dave's Rhumboogie and the Downbeat Room of the Sherman Hotel (with Fats Waller). While singing upstairs at the Garricks backed by the Cats and the Fiddle Lionel Hampton's visit brought an offer, and Washington worked as his female band vocalist after she had sung with the band for its opening at the Chicago Regal Theatre. She made her recording debut for the Keynote label that December with "Evil Gal Blues", written by Leonard Feather and backed by Hampton and musicians from his band, including Joe Morris (trumpet) and Milt Buckner (piano). Both that record and its follow-up, "Salty Papa Blues", made Billboard's "Harlem Hit Parade" in 1944. She stayed with Hampton's band until 1946 and, after the Keynote label folded, signed for Mercury Records as a solo singer. Her first record for Mercury, a version of Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'", was another hit, starting a long string of success. Between 1948 and 1955, she had 27 R&B top ten hits, making her one of the most popular and successful singers of the period. At the same time as her biggest popular success, she also recorded sessions with many leading jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown and Clark Terry on the album Dinah Jams (1954), and also recorded with Cannonball Adderley and Ben Webster. In 1959, she had her first top ten pop hit, with a version of "What a Diff'rence a Day Made", which made Number 4 on the US pop chart. Her band at that time included arranger Belford Hendricks, with Kenny Burrell (guitar), Joe Zawinul (piano), and Panama Francis (drums). She followed it up with a version of Irving Gordon's "Unforgettable", and then two highly successful duets in 1960 with Brook Benton, "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" (No. 5 Pop, No. 1 R&B) and "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love)" (No. 7 Pop, No. 1 R&B). Her last big hit was "September in the Rain" in 1961 (No. 23 Pop, No. 5 R&B). |
Saunders Terrell (24 October 1911 — 11 March 1986), better known as Sonny Terry, was a blind, American Piedmont blues musician. He was widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.
Terry was born in Greensboro, GA. His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. He sustained injuries to his eyes and went blind by the time he was 16, which prevented him from doing farm work himself, and in order to earn a living Terry was forced to play music. He began playing in Shelby, North Carolina. After his father died, he began playing in the trio of Piedmont blues-style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died in 1941, he established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and the pair recorded numerous songs together. The duo became well-known among white audiences, as they joined the growing folk movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This included collaborations with Styve Homnick, Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing Folkways Records (now Smithsonian/Folkways) classic recordings. In 1938 Terry was invited to play at Carnegie Hall for the first From Spirituals to Swing concert, and later that year he recorded for the Library of Congress. In 1940 Terry recorded his first commercial sides. Some of his most famous works include "Old Jabo" a song about a man bitten by a snake and "Lost John" in this he demonstrates his amazing breath control. Terry was also in the 1947 original cast of the Broadway musical comedy, Finian's Rainbow. He also appeared in The Colour Purple directed by Steven Spielberg. With Brownie McGhee, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk. Terry collaborated with Ry Cooder on "Walkin' Away Blues" as well as a cover of Robert Johnson's "Crossroad Blues" for the 1986 film Crossroads. |
Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport TN.
At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success; as well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums. in the 1940s Terry and McGhee became successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.. Late in his life, McGhee began appearing in small film or TV roles. With Sonny Terry, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk. In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Hear. t McGhee appeared in a 1988 episode of "Family Ties" titled "The Blues, Brother" in which he played fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock entitled "The Blues Singer." Happy Traum, a former guitar student of Brownie's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, talk about his life and the blues. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in 1971. The autobiographical section features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward). |
Ms. Jody was born to the late Reverend Joe and Vertie Sims Pickens in Chicago, IL. She was raised in Bay Springs, Mississippi where she presently lives. In 2006, at the suggestion of her friends Leo Johnson and William Day, Ms. Jody made a visit to Ecko Records in Memphis, TN where she was introduced to the staff. Shortly thereafter she joined Ecko Records, her first CD was released entitled "You're My Angel" has brought Ms. Jody immediate recognition from the radio station programmers and their listeners. Songs like "Ms. Jody", "Sugar Daddy", and "Get Drunk Party" received heavy airplay and the label rushed out a second CD.
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Eugene "Hideaway" Bridges. Born in 1963 in New Orleans and raised in Amite, Louisiana, the son of Otheneil Bridges Sr, also known as blues guitarist Hideaway Slim, Eugene is the fourth child of five. His mother was from the Bullock family (the same as Anna Mae Bullock better known as Tina Turner) and Eugene claims he got his guitar skills from the Bridges side and his voice from the Bullocks. At five he was already playing with his father around Louisiana; with his brothers as The Bridges Brothers he sang gospel and was the musician of his church touring with the Pastor, Elder AA Edwards. At thirteen Eugene was entering R&B talent shows and had formed his first R&B band The Five Stars.
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DeFord Bailey was an American country music and blues star from the 1920s until 1941. He was the first performer to be introduced on the Grand Ole Opry and the first African-American performer on the show.
Bailey was a pioneer member of the WSM Grand Ole Opry and one of its most popular performers, appearing on the program from 1927 to 1941. During this period he toured with major country stars, including Uncle Dave Macon, Bill Monroe, and Roy Acuff. Like other black stars of his day traveling in the South and West, he faced difficulties in finding food and accommodations because of discriminatory Jim Crow laws. |
Pink Anderson was born in Laurens, South Carolina, and raised in nearby Greenville and Spartanburg. He joined Dr. William R. Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to entertain the crowds while Kerr tried to sell a concoction purported to have medicinal qualities. He also toured with Leo "Chief Thundercloud" Kahdot and his medicine show, often with the harmonica player Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson, who was based in Jonesville, South Carolina.
Anderson was recorded at the Virginia State Fair in May 1950. He recorded an album in the early 1960s and performed at some live venues. He appeared in the 1963 film The Bluesmen. |
Lucille Anderson also known as Lucille Bogan & Bessie Jackson was born in Amory, Mississippi, and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She was among the first Female Blues singers to be recorded. Respectfully known as one of "the big three of the blues", along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, she first recorded vaudeville songs for Okeh Records in New York in 1923, with the pianist Henry Callens. Later that year she recorded "Pawn Shop Blues" in Atlanta, Georgia; this was the first time a black blues singer had been recorded outside New York or Chicago.
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Esther Bigeou was an American vaudeville and blues singer. Billed as "The Girl with the Million Dollar Smile", she was one of the classic female blues singers popular in the 1920s. She recorded for OKeh Records in 1921 and 1923 and toured the Theater Owners Booking Association vaudeville circuit with the Billy King Company in 1923. From 1923 to 1925 and 1927 to 1930, she toured as a single act in the American South, Midwest, and Northeast.
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Louise "Blue Lu" Barker a jazz and blues singer, also known as Louise Dupont. Her better-known recordings include "Don't You Feel My Leg" and "Look What Baby's Got for You."
She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and often sang and performed with her husband, Danny Barker, a regular of the New Orleans music scene. Barker's recording of "A Little Bird Told Me" reached the Billboard chart on December 18, 1948, and lasted 14 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 4. Barker was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997. |
Willie Lee Perryman known professionally as Piano Red and later in life as Dr. Feelgood, was the first American blues musician to hit the pop music charts. He was a self-taught pianist who played the barrelhouse blues style (a loud percussive type of blues piano suitable for noisy bars or taverns). His performing and recording careers emerged during the period of transition from completely segregated "race music", to "rhythm and blues", which was marketed to white audiences. Some music historians credit Perryman's 1950 recording "Rocking With Red" for the popularization of the term rock and roll in Atlanta. His simple, hard-pounding left hand and his percussive right hand, coupled with his cheerful shout, brought him considerable success over three decades.
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Dexter Allen, born in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, is a blues musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist. His father was also the member of the gospel group The Christian Travelers, and Allen began playing bass guitar for the group at age 12.
He sang and played with the Jackson Mississippi Airtight Band in addition to sharing his talent at local churches. This exposure led to him becoming the lead guitarist for blues legend Bobby Rush |
Percy Mayfield a rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter, was born in Minden, Louisiana. He sang blues ballads, mostly songs he wrote, in a gentle vocal style. His most famous song, "Please Send Me Someone to Love", a number one R&B hit single in late 1950.
He was a prolific songwriter wrote and recorded for Specialty, and after 1954 recorded for Chess Records and Imperial Records. In 1961, Mayfield's song "Hit the Road Jack" brought him to the attention of Ray Charles, who signed him to his Tangerine Records, primarily as a songwriter. Mayfield wrote "Hide nor Hair", "At the Club", "Danger Zone", and "On the Other Hand, Baby" for Tangerine, with Ray Charles recording at least 15 of his songs. |
Ali Ibrahim "Ali Farka" Touré was born in 1939 in the village of Kanau, on the banks of the Niger River in Gourma-Rharous Cercle in the northwestern Malian region of Tombouctou. He was a Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist, and one of the African continent's most internationally renowned musicians who showed the world the root of the Blues. As the first African bluesman to achieve widespread popularity on his home continent, Touré was often known as "the African John Lee Hooker".
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Born Henry Lee Bester in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Good Rockin' Charles was a Chicago blues and electric blues harmonists, singer and songwriter. He released one album in his lifetime and is best known for his work with Johnny "Man" Young, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, Arthur "Big Boy" Spires and Jimmy Rogers.
He was inspired by the harmonica players Sonny Boy Williamson I, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Little Walter |
Memphis Willie B. a Memphis blues guitarist, harmonica player, singer and songwriter, was born in Shelby County, Tennessee,
He was known for his work with Jack Kelly's Jug Busters and the Memphis Jug Band. Willie B. developed away from a disciplined jug band style and played at various locations with Robert Johnson, Garfield Akers, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Willie Brown, who periodically travelled up from the Mississippi Delta. Willie B. once stated, "A blues is about something that's real. It's about what a man feels when his wife leaves him, or about some disappointment that happens to him that he can't do anything about. That's why none of these young boys can really sing the blues. They don't know about the things that go into a blues". |
James Columbus "Jay" McShann a jazz pianist and bandleader, moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1936, and set up his own big band, which featured variously Charlie Parker Al Hibbler, Ben Webster, Paul Quinichette, Bernard Anderson, Gene Ramey, Jimmy Coe, Gus Johnson, Harold "Doc" West, Earl Coleman, Walter Brown, and Jimmy Witherspoon among others. His first recordings were all with Charlie Parker, the first as "The Jay McShann Orchestra" on August 9, 1940. Although they included both swing and blues numbers, the band played blues on most of its records; its most popular recording was "Confessin' the Blues".
After the 2nd World War, McShann began to lead small groups featuring blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon. Witherspoon started recording with McShann in 1945, and fronting McShann's band, and had a hit in 1949 with "Ain't Nobody's Business". As well as writing much material, Witherspoon continued recording with McShann's band, which also featured Ben Webster. McShann had a modern rhythm and blues hit with "Hands Off", featuring a vocal by Priscilla Bowman, in 1955. |
Kip Anderson a soul blues and R&B singer and songwriter, is best known for his 1967 single, "A Knife and a Fork." He recorded for a multitude of different record labels, worked as a radio DJ, and maintained a career lasting from the late 1950s to the 1990s, despite undertaking a decade long custodial sentence. At various times Anderson worked with Sam Cooke, The Drifters, Jerry Butler and Jackie Wilson.
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Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell a blues guitarist and singer, best known as half of the guitar-piano duo he formed with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they had a productive working relationship. Carr convinced Blackwell to record with him for Vocalion Records in 1928; the result was "How Long, How Long Blues", the biggest blues hit of that year.
Scrapper was an acoustic single-note picker in the Chicago blues and Piedmont blues styles. Blackwell also made solo recordings for Vocalion, including "Kokomo Blues", which was transformed into "Old Kokomo Blues" by Kokomo Arnold and later reworked as "Sweet Home Chicago" by Robert Johnson. Blackwell and Carr toured throughout the American Midwest and South between 1928 and 1935 as stars of the blues circuit, recording over 100 sides. |
Butterbeans and Susie were a Black comedy duo comprising Jodie Edwards and Susie Edwards They married in 1917, and performed together until the early 1960s. Their act, a combination of marital quarrels, comic dances, and racy singing, proved popular on the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) tour. They later moved to vaudeville and appeared for a time with the blackface minstrel troupe the Rabbit's Foot Company.
Butterbeans and Susie's act played up the differences between the two. Susie wore elegant dresses and presented an air of composure and sexiness. Butterbeans, in contrast, played the fool, with his too-small pants and bowler hat, bow tie, tails, and floppy shoes. He was loudly belligerent: "I'd whip your head every time you breathe; rough treatment is exactly what you need." However, his pugnaciousness was belied by a happy demeanor and an inability to resist Susie's charms. Susie Edwards and her husband Jodie (Butterbeans), innovated the suspicious wife hapless husband routine later adapted by Fibber McGee and Molly and Desi Arnez & Lucy |
Lizzie Douglas known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter whose recording career lasted from the 1920s to the 1950s. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "Bumble Bee", "Nothing in Rambling", and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues". Her performances and songwriting made her well known in a genre dominated by men. She started her career on Beale Street, with its thriving blues scene, and made her living by playing guitar and singing.
Memphis Minnie has been described as "the most popular female country blues singer of all time". Big Bill Broonzy said that she could "pick a guitar and sing as good as any man I've ever heard." Minnie lived to see a renewed appreciation of her recorded work during the revival of interest in blues music in the 1960s. She was an influence on later singers, such as Big Mama Thornton, Jo Ann Kelly and Erin Harpe. |
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was a country blues singer and guitarist, raised in Avalon, Mississippi. In 1963 he to move to Washington, D.C., where he was recorded by the Library of Congress. He helped further the American folk music revival, leading to the rediscovery of many other bluesmen of Hurt's era. Hurt performed on the university and coffeehouse concert circuit with other Delta blues musicians brought out of retirement.
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Big Bill Broonzy a blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played blues sound popular with working-class Black audiences. He was one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. One of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in writing songs that reflected his rural-to-urban experiences. |
James "Kokomo" Arnold a left-handed slide guitarist, his intense style of playing and rapid-fire vocal delivery set him apart from his contemporaries. He got his nickname in 1934 after releasing "Old Original Kokomo Blues" for Decca Records, a cover version of Scrapper Blackwell's blues song about the city of Kokomo, Indiana. He was a major influence on the seminal Delta blues artist Robert Johnson, and thus influenced much modern music.
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Alice Leslie Carter was a classic female blues singer, active as a recording artist in the early 1920s. Her best-known tracks are "Decatur Street Blues" and "Aunt Hagar's Children Blues". She was a contemporary of the better-known recording artists Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, and Bertha "Chippie" Hill.
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Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. a blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. He was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. |
Gladys Bentley a blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance recorded for the OKeh, Victor, Excelsior, and Flame labels.
Bentley was a pianist, singer, and performer , she headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. |