While several women rose to fame as blues vocalists in the early 1930s, few succeeded as instrumentalists. Memphis Minnie was a notable exception. A forceful guitarist who once reportedly beat Big Bill Broonzy in a guitar picking contest, Memphis Min…

The original tough-mama prototype for nearly every female blues singer to come, hard-living, big-voiced Bessie Smith was also the first blues singer with a mega-hit recording career, achieved in part via collaborations with some of the most notable m…

One of the earliest recorded blues acts, Hunter sang with a clarity of diction and tone that made her music accessible to white audiences. At the height of her popularity, she recorded with nearly all her great jazz contemporaries, among them Louis A…

b. Lucille Anderson, 1 April 1897, Amory, Mississippi, USA, d. 10 August 1948. Bogan was one of the toughest female blues singers of the pre-war era. Although not as sophisticated as Bessie Smith, she first recorded as early as 1923 and never worked …

Like contemporaries Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace sang gutbucket blues in a jazz-band setting. Enormously influential on subsequent generations of female blues singers, Wallace served as a musical mentor to Bonnie Raitt…

One of the earliest blues singers, and one of the first to record, Georgia-born Ma Rainey pretty much created the template for vocal-oriented piano blues. She started making records towards the beginning of the recording era in the '20s, but she had …

b. Amos Easton, 7 May 1905, Brunswick, Georgia, USA, d. 1968, Los Angeles, California, USA. Bumble Bee Slim was a blues guitarist, although he seldom played on record; it was as a singer that he recorded prolifically from 1931-37. Leaving home around…

b. 15 March 1905, Charleston, South Carolina, USA, d. 7 May 1950, New York City, New York, USA. Bertha Hill was in showbusiness as a singer and dancer aged 14, when she claimed to have stolen the show from Ethel Waters. Nicknamed for her youth and sm…

b. 9 March 1903, Sandersville, Georgia, USA. The birth date was supplied by Big Bill Broonzy and, at the time of writing, it is not known whether Georgia White is still alive. Her first record was recorded for Vocalion Records in 1930 in the company …

A singer/guitarist equally fluent in gospel, blues, and jazz, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, like Little Richard and Al Green after her, reflected a quintessentially American artistic tension between the sacred and the profane. This combination of the secula…

Mamie Smith is widely regarded as the first female performer to record a vocal blues, with her 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues." This record proved to be enormously influential to legions of blues singers, helping to popularize the genre. However, Smi…

b. Fulton Allen, 1908, Wadesboro, North Carolina, USA, d. 13 February 1941, USA. One of a large family, Fuller learned to play the guitar as a child and had begun a life as a transient singer when he was blinded, either through disease or when lye wa…

Some artists are influential because so many followers try to imitate them; others are influential precisely because they cannot be imitated. Lightnin' Hopkins was of the latter variety. With a career that stretched from the 1920s through the '70s, t…

b. Elizabeth Mary Landreaux, 31 March 1895, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, d. 17 March 1963, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. As a teenager, Miles sang with outstanding early jazzmen including King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Kid Ory and Bunk Johnson. By the …

b. Roberta Louise Osborne, 26 July c.1925, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Adams' childhood well justifies her claim, "I was born with the blues." With her mother an alcoholic and her father unknown to her, Osborne was brought up in Detroit by her aunt i…

This soul belter was based in Shreveport LA A onetime lounge singer and hippie girl-singer Honeycutt came late to blues and RB after gigging on the crawfish circuit with a band called A-Train Niles J Frantz All Music Guide

b. 15 June 1942, Chelan, Washington, USA. Stuart began performing at the Pamir House, or P-House, a folk club based in her home city. She befriended several local performers, notably Don MacAllister and Steve Lalor (both later of the Daily Flash), be…

b. 12 September 1900, Jowett, Texas, USA, d. 16 April 1954, Richard, Texas, USA. A small, powerful man, Alexander was unusual among rural blues singers on record in that he played no instrument. He worked as a sectionhand when not making his living a…

b. 22 December 1919, Mississippi, USA, d. 14 April 1954. Growing up in Chicago, Green began to sing in clubs in the mid-30s. By the end of the decade she was appearing regularly at some of the city's best-known nightspots, and was recording with arti…

Lil Johnson made use of one thing that always sells in music everytime sex She eventually toned down her lyrics somewhat since record company censorship was beginning to plague her as well as shifting public taste Nonetheless she recorded quite a few…