Resonating Strings: The Remarkable Journey of Memphis Minnie and the Heart of Blues Heritage

As I uncork a bottle of Summer Water and the bluesy strums take over the room, my thoughts drift to the legendary Memphis Minnie, whose story resonates deeply with my own discovery of the blues. Pour yourself a glass and join me, Harriet, in a heartfelt tribute to a woman who battled poverty and societal expectations to emerge as a beacon in the world of blues. Through Minnie's eyes, we stroll down Beale Street, relive her courageous leap to electrify her guitar, and find inspiration in her resolve to sing her truth, despite the hardships that followed her from the spotlight to her final days.

Memphis Minnie wasn't just a name on a record label; she was a pioneer who took the blues from rural porches to the electric buzz of Chicago's clubs. Her life was a melody of high notes and heartbreaking blues that echoed the struggles of many unsung heroes of her era. This episode is an ode to those artists like Minnie, whose voices may have faded but whose stories are etched in the soul of every chord they played. We'll explore the significance of artist rights through her narrative, a lesson still crucial in today's melody of the music industry.

Finally, as we segue from Minnie's tale to the anticipation of family gatherings and festive cheer, I can't help but tip my hat to Brenda's knack for creating spaces that sing with personality. The upcoming holiday promises the joy of kinship in a setting designed to bring out the best in our shared stories and laughter. Stay tuned for more blues, more tales, and of course, more sound, strat, as we continue our weekly rendezvous here on the podcast.

Intro/outro music by Soundtripe music

Website: https://moorewineandmusic.com
Email: moorewinemusic@gmail.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Soundstripe. Soundstripe. Soundstripe. Evening evening. Everybody. This is Harriet from the More Wine and Music podcast, the podcast where I discuss music over a glass of wine Tonight I'm drinking. This is different. This is called Summer Water. It's basically a light rosé, so I'm drinking something light tonight.

Speaker 1: 0:57

So I'm going to welcome everybody to this chilly Saturday evening. It's been chilly for the past what two days. This is supposed to be like the end of May. It should be kind of warming up. It was warm like near 90, like beginning of the week. Now wearing our jackets again. I hope I don't get sick. I doubt it because I've been inside most of the time. But anyway, welcome to Saturday's podcast. I'm not going to upload on Friday nights, but once again I was kind of late in doing my content for tonight, so I wanted to make sure I take an extra night and get it done. Plus, I'm taking classes online, so I'm doing a little bit of everything. So I hope everybody's feeling pretty good. I'm feeling okay.

Speaker 1: 1:53

While I was writing for this tonight's episode, I've been listening to some of the old blues artists on YouTube. I can appreciate it now. I didn't appreciate it when I was growing up because my dad just that was his song. I mean he played the blues and that's all you heard. I just didn't appreciate it. I mean, I listened to it and you just can't help but to recognize the songs and recognize the artists, but I really didn't really appreciate it until I've gotten grown and then start really digging into the background of a lot of these artists. So I've been enjoying it, I've been enjoying it All right. So without further ado, let's get started with tonight's episode 11. We've got one more blues artist episode for the more wine and music podcast for season one. Next week would be my last week for the blues genre and then I'm going to take a little break in between time and then I'm going to go into a different type of genre of music.

Speaker 1: 3:07

All right, but tonight's episode, episode 11, I'm going to talk about Miss Memphis many. Can you say that three times? Miss Memphis many, memphis, many, memphis, many was another female artist that was known as Queen of the Blues, and in her own right, because she made a big contribution as far as the blues genre in her day. So I wanted to talk about her and here she goes. She was born Miss Lizzie Douglas. Now, how did you get Memphis many from Lizzie? I don't know, but she was born in June, on June 3, 1887, in the rural areas of Algiers, louisiana, which is near the Mississippi River.

Speaker 1: 4:08

She was the eldest, she was the oldest of 13 children. Once again, you know how we are. We come from a big, large family down in the south that was built in farm hands, all those kids. I don't see how the parents did it, but having all those bunch of kids, we all those extra, built in field hands. Her parents were Abe and Gertrude Douglas. They were Baptist sharecroppers. She was known. She didn't like the name Lizzie. I wouldn't either. To me Lizzie I think of Lizzie Borton, but but she didn't like her name was Lizzie. So everybody, her family, start calling her kid. So that was her nickname. Her family and friends called her the kid, not Billy the kid, but the kid, her kid.

Speaker 1: 5:07

In 1904, the Douglas family moved out of the Mississippi area I mean, I'm sorry, the Louisiana area into the Mississippi area, which was on walls Mississippi. Walls, mississippi is about 10 to 15 miles south from Memphis, tennessee. At 10 years old, for a birthday her parents bought her a banjo and that was her start of music. So she started to teach herself how to play the banjo at the age of 10. When she became a adolescence, like in her early 12, 13 years old, she left home and started playing, wandered off into like a bill street so she wasn't that far from bill street, from living in walls, mississippi. She would sneak off and go down to bill street and started playing with, trying to get into a lot of these venues that were popular back then. Even though she was 13 years old, she started getting pretty good at her playing. So she was actually able to work at local parties. She would play for birthday parties, for little neighborhood events, little picnics and such like that. So she became good and was good enough to play at these little particular events, like most of them did. You know how it starts you got to start local first before you start moving on to bigger things.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So, ms Lizzie, or the kid she decided to run away and join the circus. She literally left home and joined the circus. So she joined. This was around what? 1910? She dubbed herself as Kid Douglas that was her little stage name and she joined the Ringley Brothers. So she started touring and performing with them for a while. It was there that she just started honing in on her craft and through practicing Lizzie had. Her voice was very. She had a strong voice. It had that southern style to it and her unique way of playing the guitar. It worked well with her voice. So she still had that bluesy, almost down in the Delta type style of playing. So that was entertaining and that went well with her playing. She toured with the Ringley Brothers for a while.

Speaker 1: 8:25

She got tired of it and she returned back to Beale Street and it was there that she met her first husband, who was also a blues artist, and it was Casey Bill Weldon. Casey was part of the Memphis Jug Band and if you recall last week when I was talking about Sleepy John Estes, you about the Jug Band that was very popular in the 20s, well, casey Weldon was part of that, the Memphis Jug Band. So they got together and once they got married they got together and started writing their own music and performing throughout the South. Their marriage didn't last long. I don't know what happened. I mean I think they were only married for like a couple of years and it was. You know. They quickly divorced, but it wasn't long after that that Lizzie met Kansas Jill McCoy, who was her second husband, and it was that marriage, the second marriage where she became actually started becoming famous because they actually collaborated well together. He had a type of a strong voice, a booming, deep voice, and with her way of playing, and he also played the guitar and her voice, I mean, the collaboration went well. Matter of fact, this was with those two.

Speaker 1: 10:03

They wrote the song, her famous song, bumblebee. I don't, you know, this is way before my time, but if you look, listen to it on, you can look it up on YouTube and hear her play. You know the song Bumblebee. That was her first breakout song. So it was around 1929 when she and Kansas Joe, her second husband, were approached by Columbia Records to record. You know, as always the recording companies from the north, usually around Chicago or New York, they would send scouts down south to scout around and look for talent in the deep south, and that's how they, columbia Records met up with Memphis Many and her husband and from there, in 1930, they decided to leave Memphis and move up to Chicago, and on the song Bumblebee, it was Columbia Records who actually gave her the name Memphis Many. So she was no longer Lizzie Douglas, no longer Kid Douglas, so she is now Memphis Many so.

Speaker 1: 11:35

So they moved to Chicago, as I said, and they became pretty much getting well-known. Into them, you know, in the haunts that usually when people from the South will come up in Chicago to play. So they were able to perform in a lot of those venues and they collaborated and made another song called when the levy breaks. And then, if you, I listened to it earlier today and it is the interesting song. It is a good collaboration between she and Kansas. Joe Joe sang lead in the song. Actually he sang anyway. She didn't sing but you could hear her guitar playing so she was the background to his singing and so you can hear her talent. She was very talented in playing. So while living in Chicago, as I said, their music started to gain momentum between the 30s and the 40s Although, as you know, while they were recording it kind of declined because that was during the early, I would say like the 20s, right when they first moved into Chicago.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Although they were recording and make a music, the sales of the record, their records weren't is great because it was during the depression, so many people couldn't afford to, you know, purchase any type of you know music because of the depression. So that kind of mess you know, kind of created a hardship between them economically because you know they couldn't live too much off of anything and, as always, we all know that they you know a lot of these artists weren't getting paid much anyway. It was always the record companies. So, you know, after a while they became disillusioned and returned back to Down South. When, before they moved down South once again, she and her second husband, they had problems. I don't know what happened. Their marriage didn't last long and she they divorced and I think it said the last song that they recorded together was called Moning the Blues and I guess in that song you can pretty much hear the. You can tell that something was really going on between them because of that song. So it went too long.

Speaker 1: 14:38

After that, I mean, they split up and he actually Kendra Scho, actually hooked up with her, his younger brother, and they started performing. They went on to call themselves the Harlem Ham Fats H-A-M-F-A-T-S. Don't know what that is or what that means, but Kansas Joe and his little brother became that group. Okay, in the meantime, memphis Many she did went on to collaborate with other artists such as, ironically, another artist called Bumblebee, slim Black, bob Hudson, blind John Davis and Ernest Little Joe's son Lawlers. Now Little Joe Lawlers became husband number three. So this was Many's first, third and last husband and they started a new collaboration of music together and out of that collaboration they made the song who Do Lady and I did listen to that earlier too.

Speaker 1: 16:01

I kind of like that. I kind of like that song who Do Lady by her, and other songs were me and my show for blues, and it was around 1941 that she did something different. This is what was unique about Memphis Many. Memphis Many was the actual first guitar artist that actually start playing electric guitar. Everybody thought that Muddy Waters was the one who introduced electric guitar playing, which she was one of the first, but Memphis Many was the actual one. She did it a year before Muddy Waters did. So she's the one that brought in start playing the acoustics or the electric guitar. So she was a female. So that was interesting. And also she was the first artist that incorporated an actual band, like she used the electric guitar, she had a bass player, she had a piano player and she had drums in her band. So that was something different. That wasn't never done before, but particularly definitely not down in the south, the southern artists. They weren't doing that. So it was she and Muddy Waters who incorporated that style of blues.

Speaker 1: 17:39

So she was able to also work with other artists like Sunnyland, slim, roosevelt, sykes, and her lyrics were somewhat suggestive. She had a lot of subject matters that she would talk about in her music, matters such as crime, some sexual content, some about voodoo, things that were going on that she knew about in her lifetime and in her travels. So she would write a music about it. Memphis Minnie was also. She wasn't no meek and mild woman. I mean, she held her own with the best of them. She said she was a gambler, she was a drinker, she would party with. I mean, I guess you know it's hard as a female being in a male dominant industry, but she did hold her own, and oftentimes it says she would, you know they would compete, and she would compete along with her male counterparts, and a lot of times it wouldn't be, you know, perform for money. Usually they would perform in competition for a bottle of whiskey, which she would always, you know, a lot of times she would win. So she, she was, you know, hardcore. She was definitely hardcore by 1955, though things started to kind of decline for her, she, her health was starting to fail so she had to come off the road and stop touring.

Speaker 1: 19:30

She and her husband, little Joe, returned to Memphis and they were pretty much broke. They didn't have any money. In 1960, she suffered a stroke and then in 61, little Joe passed away. So you know they both, you know all the songs that they've recorded while they were in Chicago they didn't get, they didn't reap the benefits of that. And you know, again, that goes back to being a taken advantage, especially the African, early African American artists. They were just, you know, being taken care. I mean they were being, you know, taken advantage of. You know they weren't paid like they should be. So she came I mean they came back penniless.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Not long after her last husband passed away she suffered another stroke. She had another stroke. This time. The stroke debilitated her to where she was confined to a wheelchair and one of her sisters had to take care of her. So she wasn't able to perform or do anything. She did for a little bit Mentor, the up and coming new musicians that were, you know, up and coming. One of the best advice that she did tell them she said you can play anything you want, just don't let them them them mean the recording companies take your money. Don't let them take your money Because you know that's exactly what they're known for. You know they'll record you and do all of you know pump you up, but then you don't reap the benefits from it. So she, you know, became destitute to where her social security wasn't enough to pay the bills, especially for her care. So she had to be put into a nursing home and somehow fans found out about it in other musicians. So they jumped in and helped. They would send money, you know, to help pay for her care. So there were people who did care about her and didn't forget her and her music contribution. They did help pay for her care. She just I mean, she was in the wheelchair for the rest of her life. She was in the nursing home.

Speaker 1: 22:26

In August 6 of 1973 at the age of 86. Lizzie Douglas, memphis. Many passed away. She was passed away in the nursing home. She was buried in an unmarked grave at the New Hope Cemetery in Memphis. It wasn't until years later that the blues singer, female singer, bonnie Ray, bought and paid for a monument for her grave. So she now don't do have a monument, a headstone, at her grave site.

Speaker 1: 23:15

She was one of the ones another unsung hero, unsung artist that just didn't get her dues when she was alive. It's sad that all the work that you've contributed and have nothing to show for it. I totally agree, auntie. It's so sad how black artists have been taken advantage of. They were, it was like they're just so glad to. I guess a lot of them they were just so glad to get out of those cotton fields. They would do anything, and then they had a talent but they weren't paid. They're just due. There just wasn't. And a lot of them didn't have the intellectual, the ability, the business mind I shouldn't say intellectual, the business mind to demand what they were so deserving of. I love Bonnie Ray too. I love her music. So, and I'm glad that she was, I think Memphis Many was a big influence on Bonnie Ray.

Speaker 1: 24:40

A lot of the newer female artists that are later on, a lot of their influence came from Memphis Many. So Memphis Many was a very attractive woman you see a picture of her very attractive, but again just died, penniless, died alone, really, I mean, and she contributes so much to the blues industry. But again, this is why I want to pay homage to these artists because they deserve their just due. She was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. She was one of the first 20 of the blues artists that were inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980. Ray Charles, new Memphis, many Is that what you're saying, auntie? A lot of these artists, as I've said I think I've said it last week a lot of these artists listening to a lot of these songs and listening to their music, listening to their style of music, you can almost feel it.

Speaker 1: 26:24

Put yourself back in those times of what they were dealing with, about his masters and not to sell them. Yeah, he's one of the few smart ones, ray Charles. One of the few smart ones that actually had his masters. And not to sell them. Yeah, whatever you do as an artist, you have to take control of your music, because if you don't, the recording company will, they will, and you will have to fight for your name. You have to copyright.

Speaker 1: 27:11

I mean, it is so cutthroat. The music industry is nothing to brag about. You think artists, performers, are rich? They actually not. Who are getting paid are the actual, the songwriters, the producers, the recording, the record companies. They're the ones that are getting rich. It's not the performers themselves Don't think that all these performers they're living large and all that. They're really not. This is why I don't think I could have done it, even though I come from a musically inclined family. As younger I did think about, I know, my cousin and I were cousins and we always used to talk about being famous and writing our own music and all that. But you look at how many people have been ripped off. It's just, it's sickening, it really is. But anyway, like I was saying, I wanted to pay homage to these artists and listening to their songs and listening to their stories, I mean it really really appreciate. I really appreciate what they had to go through. They went through a lot. They went through a lot. I can't imagine coming up from the south, touring in the south and just trying to survive, let alone entertain and survive. I wanted to make sure that I pay homage to them. All right, anybody else, I'm glad I have some people on. I appreciate you guys listening.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Next week will be my last episode for the blues genre. I'm going to go into the jazz in the next season I'm going to talk about some jazz, early jazz artists. Next week I decided to for my last episode, episode 12, I'm going to talk about this guy named Big Joe Turner. Now he's different. He was one of those I am burning up because of the light.

Speaker 1: 29:53

He was one of these big blues artists that his style of music, along with Roosevelt Sykes you would see them on movies like I don't know their songs, their playing was not like the country down home, country twain, type blues these were. This was more of a, I would say, broadway, I don't want to say showtime or showstopper type. They played actually in really nice venues. I'm trying to think of some old movies that would remind me of the old entertainment movie, like something like what Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, that type of style of genre of where they would play. So this is what Big Joe Turner. They have this big orchestra band and he would play. That's the type of genre or venue. It was blues, but it was this type of blues that was played in those type of places. So I thought I'd go out and do a switch from coming off the coming out of the Delta, coming out of Memphis, and go up towards St Louis and do some St Louis style blues and that would be like our slight Big Joe Turner. So that'll be next week. So, thank you guys.

Speaker 1: 31:34

Any music, yeah, like musicals, right, yeah, you know what I mean. Like musicals and like Lena Horne and those type of movies, oh, movies like that. So that's the type of style of, but I mean, what he's played. It was more of. It was blues, but it was a more up-tempo blues, if you, you know, get a chance, look them up and you'll know what I'm talking about. So, all right, so I look forward to talking with you guys next week.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Now, like I said, I'm gonna take probably take a two weeks break in between before I go into season number two. And if any jazz artists that anybody is interested in wanting me to talk about as far as their biography, let me know. I wanna, you know, go beyond the ones that we all know, like Billie Holiday, and you know, I wanna go to people that are lesser known that but has just as much impact in the music business than you know. But again, just didn't get their just dues. So I'm not gonna do anybody like Billie Holiday or who else? Cal Basie and you know, louis Armstrong, because I mean, we all know, we all know them, we all you know, we love them and we know them, but I wanna kinda do some lesser known artists. So if you know any lesser known artists that you would like me to do a biography on, just let me know. All right, so I love you guys.

Speaker 1: 33:30

Thank you guys for listening. Enjoy the weekend, enjoy the holiday. And, brenda, I love the room that you posted online. I love that room. So I can't wait to the first family get together. So wait for the invitation. All right, so you guys have a good evening and I will talk to you next week. Bye, sound, strat, sound, strat, sound, strat.