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Post by AlanB on Jul 28, 2015 7:11:11 GMT -5
In 2009 I scanned this as a Word document for whom I don't recall, but I'm sure I did it with Rob Ford's blessing. I've now turned it into a PDF for ease of use. Attachments:MEMPHIS MINNIE.pdf (106.06 KB)
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Post by AlanB on Jul 28, 2015 9:35:36 GMT -5
Whilst I'm here may as well add this which has done the rounds of blues internet groups Lord knows how many times......
"Music at Year's End" Langston Hughes The Chicago Defender January 9, 1943
"Memphis Minnie sits on top of the icebox at the 230 Club in Chicago and beats out blues on an electric guitar. A little dung-colored drummer who chews gum in tempo accompanies her, as the year's end --- 1942 --- flickers to nothing, and goes out like a melted candle.
Midnight. The electric guitar is very loud, science having magnified all its softness away. Memphis Minnie sings through a microphone and her voice --- hard and strong anyhow for a little woman's --- is made harder and stronger by scientific sound. The singing, the electric guitar, and the drums are so hard and so loud, amplified as they are by General Electric on top of the icebox, that sometimes the voice, the words, and melody get lost under sheer noise, leaving only the rhythm to come through clear. The rhythm fills the 230 Club with a deep and dusky heartbeat that overides all modern amplification. The rhythm is as old as Minnie's most remote ancestor.
Memphis Minnie's feet in her high-heeled shoes keep time to the music of her electric guitar. Her thin legs move like musical pistons. She is a slender, light-brown woman who looks like an old-maid school teacher, with a sly sense of humor. She wears glasses that fail to hide her bright bird-like eyes. She dresses neatly and sits straight in her chair perched on top of the refrigerator where the beer is kept. Before she plays she cocks her head on one side like a bird, glances from her place on the box to the crowded bar below, frowns quizzically, and looks more than ever like a colored lady teacher in a neat Southern school about to say, "Children, the lesson is on page 14 today, paragraph 2." ....
But Memphis Minnie says nothing of the sort. Instead she grabs the microphone and yells, "Hey, now!" Then she hits a few deep chords at random, leans forward ever so slightly over her guitar, bows her head and begins to beat out a good old steady down-home rhythm on the strings --- a rhythm so contagious that often it, makes the crowd holler out loud.
Then Minnie smiles. Her gold teeth flash for a split second. Her ear-rings tremble. Her left hand with dark red nails moves up and down the strings of the guitar's neck. Her right hand with the dice ring on it picks out the tune, throbs out the rhythm, beats out the blues.
Then, through the smoke and racket of the noisy Chicago bar float Louisiana bayous, muddy old swamps, Mississippi dust and sun, cotton fields, lonesome roads, train whistles in the night, mosquitoes at dawn, and the Rural Free Delivery, that never brings the right letter. All these things cry through the strings on Memphis Minnie's electric guitar, amplified to machine proportions --- a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill.
Big rough old Delta Cities float in the smoke, too. Also border cities, Northern cities, Relief, W.P.A., Muscle Shoals, the jooks, "Has Anybody Seen My Pigmeat On The Line," "See-See Rider," St. Louis, Antoine Street, Willow Run, folks on the move who leave and don't care. The hand with the dice-ring picks out music like this. Music with so much in it folks remember that sometimes it makes them holler out loud....
It was last year, 1941, that the war broke out, wasn't it? Before that there wasn't no defense work much. And the President hadn't told the factory bosses that they had to hire colored. Before that it was W.P.A. and the Relief. It was 1939 and 1935 and 1932 and 1928 and the years that you don't remember when your clothes got shabby and the insurance relapsed. Now, it's 1942 --- and different. Folks have jobs. Money's circulating again. Relatives are in the Army with big insurances if they die.
Memphis Minnie, at year's end, picks up those nuances and tunes them into the strings of her guitar, weaves them into runs and trills and deep steady chords that come through the amplifiers like the Negro heartbeats mixed with iron and steel. The way Memphis Minnie swings it sometimes makes folks snap their fingers, women get up and move their bodies, men holler, "Yes!" When they do, Minnie smiles.
But the men who run the place --- they are not Negroes --- never smile. They never snap their fingers, clap their hands, or move in time to the music. They just stand at the licker counter and ring up sales on the cash register. At this year's end the sales are better than they used to be. But Memphis Minnie's music is harder than the coins that roll across the counter. Does that mean that she understands? Or is it just science that makes the guitar strings so hard and so loud?"
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Post by blueescorpio2000 on Jul 28, 2015 10:46:24 GMT -5
Thanks for this great thread. As well as the many versions of BB by Minnie, I know there have been many covers of the song. In a brief discussion of the song in "Deep Blues", Palmer states that Muddy Waters "tampered with Memphis Minnie’s “Bumble Bee” until he’d made it into his own “Honey Bee” which later became one of his classic recordings for Chess" (Palmer 111). Does any one have thoughts on this ? Or any other references ? Thanks all ! Jeff Harris wrote: ...His (i.e. Amos Easton aka Bumble Bee Slim) best-known tune was ‘‘Sail On, Little Girl, Sail On’’ covered as‘‘Sail On Boogie’’ by T-Bone Walker, which later evolved into Muddy Waters’s ‘‘Honey Bee"... ('Easton,Amos' by Jeff Harris in 'Encyclopedia of The Blues' by Edward Komara p.295)
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Post by rooster on Aug 3, 2015 21:36:47 GMT -5
Thanks for this great thread. As well as the many versions of BB by Minnie, I know there have been many covers of the song. In a brief discussion of the song in "Deep Blues", Palmer states that Muddy Waters "tampered with Memphis Minnie’s “Bumble Bee” until he’d made it into his own “Honey Bee” which later became one of his classic recordings for Chess" (Palmer 111). Does any one have thoughts on this ? Or any other references ? Thanks all ! Welcome KateL. I'm glad you enjoyed the thread. I enjoyed my small part in helping to create it (of course, AlanB is the real deal...I'm just an amateur). In reference to your question, I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer it. You may need a blues musician to really work it out, note by note, chord by chord. rooster
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Post by AlanB on Aug 4, 2015 1:32:23 GMT -5
FWIW on 16th December 2008 the BBC's afternoon radio show "Women's Hour" devoted an entire program to Memphis Minnie. I recorded this as it played and still have the mp3 (2.5 meg). If anyone is interested in hearing this let me know and I'll gladly pass it on to Jim to make available here. Technology willing, of course.
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Post by rooster on Aug 4, 2015 6:24:16 GMT -5
Sure, Alan, I'll like to give that a listen if it's possible to put it here.
rooster
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Post by AlanB on Aug 4, 2015 8:28:59 GMT -5
Sure, Alan, I'll like to give that a listen if it's possible to put it here. rooster I'd love to my friend but the maximum allowed for attachments on this board is 1 meg!
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Post by JamesP on Aug 4, 2015 9:49:30 GMT -5
Sure, Alan, I'll like to give that a listen if it's possible to put it here. rooster I'd love to my friend but the maximum allowed for attachments on this board is 1 meg! You can use "Dropbox" to attach links to files larger. Alan, I know you shy away from this, so just email the file and I'll link thru Dropbox. Others can join at dropbox.com
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Post by JamesP on Aug 4, 2015 10:29:21 GMT -5
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