Memphis Minnie

Guitarist

• Born: June 3, 1896
• Birthplace: Algiers, Louisiana
• Died: August 6, 1973
• Place of death: Memphis, Tennessee

American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Among the first female blues instrumentalists, Memphis Minnie had an active performance career as a guitarist and singer spanning five decades and producing about two hundred recordings.

The Life

Born just outside New Orleans, Elizabeth Douglas developed an interest in music even before her family moved to Walls, Mississippi (near Memphis), in 1904. The eldest of thirteen children, Douglas quickly learned to accompany her own singing on the banjo she was given in 1905, and by the time she was fifteen she was sneaking out to Beale Street in downtown Memphis, where blues artists played. In 1916 she adopted her childhood name Kid Douglas, and she performed with the Ringling Brothers Circus until 1920. During this time she established a reputation as an accomplished guitarist and singer, and she often played in a duo with guitarist Willie Brown and with various jug bands and itinerant musicians.

For most of the 1920’s, Douglas’s base was Memphis, where she met her first husband, Joe McCoy. McCoy played guitar and sang, and the two of them actively performed on Beale Street and for countless parties, picnics, and other social functions. During an informal performance at a Memphis barbershop, they were heard by a Columbia Records talent scout, who brought them to New York in 1929 for their first recording session. It was for the release of these records that McCoy was dubbed Kansas Joe, and Douglas became Memphis Minnie.

Following the success of their first record releases, Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie returned to Memphis, where they continued recording. In 1930 they moved to Chicago, where Minnie was based for the next twenty-seven years. She and McCoy continued recording and performing together until they divorced in 1935. During this period, Minnie became known as a blues guitarist who could outplay just about any of her contemporaries and as a redoubtable woman who drank, gambled, fought, cursed, and chewed tobacco. After her divorce, Minnie capitalized on her increasing fame, playing often at the 708 Club as well as touring regularly throughout the South and returning periodically to Memphis.

In 1939 Minnie married another guitarist, Little Son Joe (Ernest Lawlars), with whom she toured and recorded for the rest of her professional life. While still based in Chicago, she began to branch out, living for extended periods in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan, in the late 1940’s. Both in ill health, Minnie and Lawlars returned to Memphis permanently in 1957. Minnie’s career was ended by a severe stroke in 1960, and Lawlars died in 1961. Following a long period of deterioration, Minnie died in 1973.

The Music

Minnie probably composed or helped to compose almost all of the two hundred or so recordings she made from 1929 to 1953. Exact attributions are incomplete or, in many cases, missing, and this is compounded by the fact that Minnie was occasionally credited by her married surnames as well as her stage name. Her guitar style was largely formed by the time of her initial recordings, but at first her singing was shrill and insecure. As the recordings continued, a rising comfort level is evident in her singing, which began to demonstrate a rhythmic confidence not common to her Chicago blues contemporaries. In this regard, she seems to have absorbed much of the style of the classic blues singers of the 1920’s, such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. As a guitarist, she demonstrated great versatility in her roles as soloist and accompanist to McCoy, capable of playing lead or rhythm as well as in the bottleneck style. By 1941 she even experimented with an electric guitar (her preferred instrument remained the steel-bodied National she had been playing since before 1930), although she generally left the electric instrument to Lawlers, who was heavily featured on their last recordings.

“Bumble Bee.”Almost all of Minnie’s recordings made from 1919 to 1934 were done with McCoy. Generally, one is featured with the other playing accompaniment, although there are several examples of theatrical duets, such as both parts of “Can I Do It For You?,” performed in the tradition of black vaudeville acts such as Butterbeans and Susie. One of the tunes from their first recording session was Minnie’s “Bumble Bee,” which remained unreleased by Columbia Records until a rerecording of the same number for Vocalion became a hit eight months later. Minnie made five recordings of this composition (including one with the Memphis Jug Band), and it became one of her signature songs. The subject matter was a series of risqué allusions to a bumble bee’s stinger. Imagery from nature is common in Minnie’s songs, perhaps stemming from her rural upbringing.

“Sylvester and His Mule Blues.”For her first session following the break with Kansas Joe, Minnie also made a break with the elemental country blues style they had shared. On “Sylvester and His Mule Blues,” she is accompanied by a pianist rather than another guitarist, and her own style of playing has become more melodic, as opposed to the older, more intricate picking style evident on the McCoy recordings. The subject matter of this recording is also more sophisticated, with the lyrics representing a conversation between President Franklin Roosevelt and a black sharecropper who is not buying the promises of the New Deal.

“Me and My Chauffeur Blues.”Probably Minnie’s most successful recording, “Me and My Chauffeur Blues” was made early in her relationship with Lawlars. Moving away from the rural imagery of her earlier compositions, the lyrics of this tune shift the dominance in the relationship to the woman, who casts her lover as a chauffeur who will “drive me downtown” but whom she plans to shoot because she does not want him riding other girls around. The modern elements are further emphasized by the inclusion of the electric guitar for the first time on a Minnie recording. A remake of this for Checker Records in 1952 attempted to update the sound with drums, piano, and blues harmonica, although it was not successful.

“World of Trouble.”The generally unsatisfying attempts to present Minnie in an updated, postwar Chicago blues setting are common to her later recording sessions. “World of Trouble” is the most successful of these, with the prototypical Chicago blues group of electric guitar, piano, and drums providing a sensitive backing to what was a traditional blues lamenting the cold, both in terms of climate and loneliness. Minnie’s voice has become thicker and darker, retaining its rhythmic qualities but more expressive in the “moaning” associated with Rainey in her later years of recording.

Musical Legacy

Minnie’s tunes have been covered by Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones, among many others. As one of the few women instrumentalists during the 1930’s and 1940’s, she has been an inspiration to women performers, who see her as a worthy successor to the classic blues singers of the 1920’s. Despite her reputation for toughness (and occasional violence), she was remembered fondly as a mentor by young blues artists, including Little Walter and Homesick James.

Principal Recordings

singles: “Bumble Bee,” 1929; “When the Levee Breaks,” 1929; “Can I Do It for You?, Part 1,” 1930; “Can I Do It for You?, Part 2,” 1930; “Crazy Crying Blues,” 1931; “Let’s Go to Town,” 1931; “Sylvester and His Mule Blues” 1935; “Good Morning,” 1936; “Hot Stuff,” 1937; “In My Girlish Days,” 1941; “Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” 1941; “Shout the Boogie,” 1947 (with Blind John Davis); “Three Times Seven Blues,” 1947 (with Blind John Davis); “Daybreak Blues,” 1948; “Million Dollar Blues,” 1948; “Downhome Girl,” 1949; “Jump Little Rabbit,” 1949; “Tonight I Smile on You,” 1949; “Sweet Man,” 1950; “Tears on My Pillow,” 1950; “World of Trouble,” 1953.

Bibliography

Garon, Paul, and Beth Garon. Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues. New York: Da Capo Press, 1992. A definitive study of Minnie’s life and work, this unravels the contradictory information contained in other biographies and appreciations of her career. It contains a full discography and a long thematic section discussing the lyrics of her songs.

Shaw, Arnold. Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Macmillan, 1978. This book is one of the few to contextualize the blues scene in Chicago in the 1930’s, with brief mention of Minnie.