It all started when seven-year-old Lizzie Douglas was given a guitar. This was her tool of choice for the next 40 years as she blazed a Blues trail as one of the first popular female Blues recording artists of the 20th century. She earned respect from her fellow Blues artists and fans as a gifted player and dedicated performer and even though her moniker says "Memphis", she was a deep influence to the Blues that would come from post-war Chicago. The ultimate mentor to any female Blues artist,
June 3, 1897
August 6, 1973
Algiers, Louisiana
Taking the name Memphis Minnie during her time in the city in the 1920's, she played in jug bands, sang Gospel, and played Blues and on Beale Street. She would start her recording career here with the hit Bumble Bee, a song that went on to become a Chicago Blues standard. She collaborated and lived with guitarist Kansas Joe McCoy at this time, and after they parted, she would have a guitarist/partner by her side for the rest of her career.
Minnie moved to Chicago in the 1930's starting a band with a bass player and drummer. A Blues power trio in the '30's!
Memphis Minnie's guitar abilities were a rare for her time. Most women performers then were in Vaudeville, and were just vocalists, Minnie was the Bonnie Raitt of her time, great voice, great guitar, great songs, and and very popular. Bonnie has always given her mad props as did all of Minnie's male contemporaries. She was also one of the first to pick up an electric guitar, ushering in the ere that spawned Rock & Roll. Imagine the granite constitution she had, escorting her through what must have been the impossibly hard times endured by the musicians, much less a woman, of the era.
Minnie was in the Ringling Brothers circus!
Minnie wrote, or co-wrote many of her hits with her three musician husbands, McCoy, Ernest "Little Son Joe" Lawlars, and Casey Bill Weldon. When The Levee Breaks, later recorded by Led Zeppelin, Bumble Bee, later recorded by Muddy Waters as Honey Bee, Me and My Chauffeur Blues, and My Baby Don't Want Me No More made Minnie one of the most popular recording artists from the Depression until World War II.
Minnie loved to wear bracelets made of silver dollars!
A link between the Country Blues of the 1920's and '30's and the post-war electric Blues, Lizzie created her own musical world that has gone on to become a common denominator in most of today's music. Minnie suffered a career-ending stroke in 1961 and was confined to nursing homes back home in Memphis until her death in 1973.
