Memphis Minnie [Douglas, Minnie; Douglas, Lizzie]

Extract

[Douglas, Minnie; Douglas, Lizzie]

( b Algiers, LA, June 3, 1897; d Memphis, Aug 6, 1973). American blues singer and guitarist . When a child she went to Memphis, where, as Kid Douglas, she earned her living as a street musician. From 1916 to 1920 she toured the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus. With her husband, the Mississippi blues guitarist and mandolin player Joe McCoy, she began a highly popular series of blues recordings (1929), and about 1930 they moved to Chicago. After their divorce in 1935 she recorded with Black Bob (piano) and Casey Bill Weldon (guitar), with whom she made the rousing Joe Louis Strut (1935, Voc.). Her common-law husband, Ernest ‘Lil Son’ Lawler, also a blues guitarist, supported her on Me and my Chauffeur Blues (1941, OK). For nearly 30 years her ‘Blue Monday’ parties in Chicago were celebrated among blues singers. In 1957 she returned to Memphis and five years later had a stroke which ended her singing career....