Born: November 1, 1898 in Houston TX
Died: November 1, 1986 in Detroit MI
Jazz age novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that "there are no second acts in American lives." Fitzgerald evidently never met blues singer Sippie Wallace, whose career spanned an amazing seven decades, and included two significantly creative and commercial eras. A classic female blues singer during the 1920s-era when women were the commercial movers-and-shakers in the blues world, Wallace found a second, and more influential career, during the late-1960s and the '70s, her unique voice having a major impact on a young Bonnie Raitt, among others.
The Texas Nightingale
Sippie Wallace was born Beulah Thomas, one of thirteen children, in Houston Texas. As a child, she sang and played piano at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Houston, but she would sneak out at night and watch blues artists performing in tent shows. By the time she was a teen, Sippie was singing with her brother, pianist Hersal Wallace. Another brother, George, was also a notable blues pianist, and is credited with originating the boogie-woogie piano style.
Performing across the state, Wallace earned her nickname, "The Texas Nightingale." In 1915, she moved to New Orleans with Hersal, where she met and married Matt Wallace two years later. She would follow her brothers to Chicago in 1923, where her powerful, bluesy vocal style won favor in the city's vibrant jazz scene.
Chicago & Okeh Records
As word of Wallace's live performances spread, it brought her to the attention of Okeh Records, which signed the singer to a contract shortly after her arrival in Chicago. Wallace's first recorded sides for the label - "Shorty George Blues" and "Up The Country Blues," written with brother George - proved to be hits that led to further sessions.
Other hits would come, including "Special Delivery Blues," recorded with Louis Armstrong on cornet; "Bedroom Blues," written by Wallace's two brothers; and the bawdy "I'm A Mighty Tight Woman," which Wallace recorded twice during the decade.
Between 1923 and 1927, Wallace recorded over forty sides for Okeh, many written by herself or with one or both of her brothers. Tragedy would follow, though, her brother Hersal dying of food poisoning in 1926. Wallace moved to Detroit in 1929 after her contract with Okeh had concluded. When both her brother George and husband Matt died in 1936, Wallace turned to religion for solace, and over the next four decades she was a singer and organist with the Leland Baptist Church in Detroit.
The Comeback Years
Between the 1930s and the mid-60s, Wallace did very little singing of the blues. Her friend and fellow singer Victoria Spivey coaxed Wallace out of retirement and onto the festival circuit in 1966. This resulted in a full-fledged comeback for the singer, who would subsequently perform and record until her death in 1986.
Wallace and Spivey recorded an album of blues standards that wouldn't be released until 1970, but she received nearly universal acclaim with the 1966 album Sippie Wallace Sings The Blues, which was recorded with pianists Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery. It was this album that is said to have influenced Bonnie Raitt to sing the blues. Wallace also reunited with the legendary Louis Armstrong, singing five songs on his 1966 Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers album.
Wallace toured on her own, and with Raitt during the 1970s and '80s, and in 1981 recorded the album Sippie, which was produced by Raitt and benefitted from her skilled guitar playing. The album would be nominated for a Grammy� Award, and won a W.C. Handy Award as "Blues Album of the Year" in 1983. During her comeback, Wallace toured the world, and performed at major events like the Newport Folk Festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, and the Ann Arbor Blues Festival.
Recommended Albums: The 1983 album Sippie presents the still considerable blues vocalist revisiting some of her classic material with the help of Bonnie Raitt, but Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1923-1925) includes Wallace's earliest hits from the golden era of female blues singers.
Purchase/Download Sippie Wallace MP3s:
"Shorty George Blues"
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"Special Delivery Blues"
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"I'm A Mighty Tight Woman"
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