Post 575: MEMPHIS MINNIE, TUBA SKINNY AND 'FRISCO BOUND' - A TEN-BAR TUNE

Memphis Minnie was quite somebody. She could play the guitar and sing well. But she was also a composer of some fine early jazz tunes.

Her real name was Lizzie Douglas and she was born in the New Orleans suburb of Algiers in 1897. Her family later lived in Tennessee. As a child, she mastered the banjo and guitar. She took to busking in the Beale Street, Memphis, area when she was only a teenager, and she also toured with a circus. It was a hard life. She became a tough, street-wise young woman; and this toughness was reflected later in her singing and playing.

She married three times. Her second husband, Joe McCoy, was a fellow busker. They were talent-spotted and went on to make records for both Columbia and Vocalion.

It was at that time (when she was already more than 30 years old) that the publicists decided to call her 'Memphis Minnie' and the name stuck. (Similarly, her husband was given the name 'Kansas Joe'.) Between 1929 and 1934, they recorded about 30 songs, some of them more than once. After they divorced, she recorded many more, sometimes with Kansas Joe's brother and later with her third husband - Ernest Lawler ('Little Son Joe'). At this time she was mainly based in Chicago.

Minnie recorded more than 130 songs in total, several of them composed by herself. Among songs Minnie recorded that have influenced and been revived by the young New Orleans musicians of the 21st Century are: Bumble Bee, Frisco Town, I'm Goin' Back Home, Me and My Chauffeur, Ice Man, Tricks Ain't Walkin' No More, What's The Matter With the Mill?, New Dirty Dozen, and When the Levee Breaks. 

Minnie is known to have been the composer of the following songs that she recorded: Black Cat Blues, You Caught Me Wrong Again, Down in the Alley, Good Biscuits, Good Morning, Has Anyone Seen My Man?, Hoodoo Lady, I Hate To See The Sun Go Down, I'm a Bad Luck Woman, I've Been Treated Wrong, Ice Man, If You See My Rooster, Keep On Eating, Ma Rainey, Man You Won't Give Me No Money, My Baby Don't Want Me No More, My Butcher Man, My Strange Man, Nothin' In Rambling. Some of the other songs for which she became well known (such as Bumble Bee and  Me and My Chauffeur) were written by McCoy or Lawler.

You can hear Minnie and her third husband (the composer) performing Me and My Chauffeur
by clicking here.
And you can watch one of today's young traditional jazz bands performing the song by clicking here.

Memphis Minnie seems to have been the composer of Frisco Town (a ten-bar blues) in 1929.  She recorded it with her husband Kansas Joe the same year. Its title rapidly changed to Frisco Bound. (This a quite different song from the Frisco Bound composed by Sam Powers in 1915.)

Still in 1929, a recording of Frisco Bound was made by James Wiggins and this increased its popularity.

This song also has recently been revived in its ten-bar form by Tuba Skinny:

Click Here.

How does it come to be a ten-bar blues? Well, if you look closely at its structure, you will see it is really a 12-bar blues, but with the first two bars omitted.

Two choruses here:

In another video of Tuba Skinny, the young musicians may be seen performing one of the 12-bar blues written by Minnie's second husband (Joe McCoy). The singer is Erika Lewis. Enjoy especially at 2 mins 20 seconds (and again later) the descending triplets played by the clarinettist (Craig Flory) in his 'solo' chorus. The song is called If You Take Me Back. You can watch it by clicking here.

By the way, my book about Tuba Skinny is now available. If you may be interested, go to the Amazon Website, click on 'Books', and type in 'Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn'.

POST 345: MERLINE JOHNSON, CLARA SMITH - THOSE LADIES OF THE BLUES

Tell me honestly: were you much aware of Lucille Bogan, Mamie Smith, Merline Johnson, Memphis Minnie, Clara Smith and Hattie Hart before Tuba Skinny and other young bands in New Orleans today revived some of their songs? I certainly wasn't. Yes, I knew about Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, and I was aware of Victoria Spivey and Clara Smith, though I couldn't have told you much about them.

So I must thank Tuba Skinny and others for making me seek out those great lady performers (who were often composers too) from the 1920s and 1930s. Fortunately, quite of a lot of their work is available on YouTube.

Lucille Bogan (in her later years performing as Bessie Jackson) lived from 1897 until 1948, first in Mississippi and later in Alabama. She was twice married.

Lucille

Lucille made a lot of recordings, songs often composed by herself; and some of them are notable for their sexual innuendoes or even explicitness. She was the originator of Tricks Ain't Walking No More. Memphis Minnie recorded it too. This Century, it has become a favourite in Tuba Skinny's repertoire. Lucille's recording probably also influenced their choice of Eddie Miller's composition I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water.

Merline Johnson was probably born in 1912, in Mississippi or Missouri.

Merline

Merline made recordings from 1937 until 1947, usually in the company of some of the most famous blues musicians of that era. If you are a fan, you may be interested to know that it was from Merline Johnson that Tuba Skinny learned Got a Man in the 'Bama Mine, Sold It To The Devil, and Running Down My Man. What a legacy from someone about whom little is known!

Hattie Hart worked both with and apart from The Memphis Jug Band. Among the songs she recorded that Tuba Skinny have taken up were Won't You Be Kind To Me? (her 1928 composition), Ambulance Man, and Papa's Got Your Bath Water On.

Hattie

Not much is known about Hattie, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in about 1900.

I must briefly mention Clara Smith, who was born around 1894 in Carolina and worked in both New Orleans and New York. In the 1920s, she recorded well over a hundred songs, often with some of the 'big names'. Though she did not compose it, Clara made Freight Train Blues famous; and this is another song Tuba Skinny have developed dramatically (train noises and all) in their repertoire.

Clara

Among Clara's other interesting recordings are Jelly Bean Blues and Percolatin' Blues. Clara died in 1935.

And what about Mamie Smith (1883 - 1946 - no relation to the other Smiths)? She was the singer who made famous the song composed in 1920 by the 27-year-old Perry Bradford, Crazy Blues. He was the Musical Director of Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds. Mamie recorded it in the same year with huge success. This is now considered by jazz and blues scholars to have been an important milestone in the history of our music, because Mamie was the first black blues singer to be recorded.

Mamie

Mamie could be said to have started the era of classic female blues. In 2014, Tuba Skinny introduced into their repertoire a super version of Crazy Blues - quite a tour de force by their singer Erika Lewis.

Memphis Minnie has become a favourite of mine. It was she who recorded Me and My Chauffeur, Bumblebee, Blood Thirsty Blues, Frisco Town, I'm Goin' Back Home, What's The Matter With The Mill? as well as many other good old songs. Erika Lewis and Tuba Skinny have found her work to be a rich source.

Memphis Minnie

'Memphis Minnie' was of course a stage name. She was born in Algiers (the 'across the river' suburb of New Orleans) in 1897 and her real name was Lizzie Douglas. As a teenager, she became a busker in Memphis and it was there that her musical career was to take off, especially when she was invited to make recordings, together with her second husband (of three): they were billed as 'Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie'. They wrote quite a lot of their own material. Over the years, Minnie performed in many different cities and recorded for various labels. She had a hard life but seems to have been a tough, resilient, cheerful woman and a good singer and guitarist. Possibly she was the most popular country blues singer of all time. She died in 1973. Fortunately, it is still possible to buy many of her recordings and to find some on YouTube. CLICK HERE  for an example of Minnie's work.

Victoria

As for Victoria Spivey from Houston (who is, I believe, a favourite of Erika's), this lady had a long career. Coming from a musical family, she lived from 1906 until 1976 and was a prolific entertainer.

She was a pianist as well as a singer and composer. (Among her compositions were TB Blues, How Do They Do It That Way?, Black Snake Blues, Detroit Moan, Moaning the Blues, Long Gone, and Spider Web Blues.) She made her first recording in 1926 and her last as late as 1964, having worked at times with several of the big names of jazz. At the age of 56, she launched a record label of her own. She even found time to marry four husbands. CLICK HERE to appreciate Victoria Spivey singing Any Kind A Man Would Be Better Than You; and you will understand at once how much she has influenced today's singers, such as Erika Lewis.

Georgia White was another blues singer who influenced Tuba Skinny. For example, Erika picked up Late Hour Blues from Georgia's 1939 recording of this song by Richard M. Jones. Georgia and Richard worked together and jointly composed I'm Blue and Lonesome; Nobody Cares For Me and Biscuit Roller - both of them songs Erika has adopted - to the delight of her fans. Georgia White is believed to have been born in 1903 and was working in Chicago by the 1920s.

Georgia White

She made a very large number of recordings. She was still performing as late as the 1960s and is believed to have died in about 1980.

While 'researching' these ladies, I discovered there were DOZENS more like them making good blues recordings at the same time. For example, check out Leonia Williams. There are several of her recordings from 1922 and 1923 on YouTube - some of them remarkably clear and impressive. She is accompanied by her 'Dixie Band', though I gather they were actually The Original Memphis Five.

I simply could not study the work of all these ladies. But believe me, they are there all right.

Post 93: 'ME AND MY CHAUFFEUR' - A WEIRD TUNE!

What a weird and wonderful blues the song Me and My Chauffeur is. It was recorded by Memphis Minnie in 1941 and composed by blues guitarist Ernest Lawler (1900 - 1961), who was her husband at that time.

When Tuba Skinny play it, the vocal seems to consist of 18 bars of which all have the usual 4 beats except for the third bar, which has six beats. Very strange.

Listen to Memphis Minnie singing her song by clicking here. Note there seem to be no words sung at all during bars 9 and 10.

Tuba Skinny took up the song in the 2010s, with Erika Lewis providing the trickily-timed vocal. Like Memphis Minnie, they play it in the unusual key of G. Enjoy their performance by clicking here.

      ======

Footnote

My books Playing Traditional Jazz,  Enjoying Traditional Jazz,  and Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn   are available from Amazon.