Memphis Minnie

At 76 years old, Memphis Minnie physical status not available right now. We will update Memphis Minnie's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Lizzie Douglas (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973), better known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter whose recording career spanned three decades.

She has recorded about 200 songs, some of which include "Bumble Bee," "Nothing in Rambling," and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues."

Later life and death

Minnie continued to record into the 1950s, but her health began to decline. She resigned from her musical career after public interest in her music waned, and the Lawlars and Lawlars returned to Memphis in 1957. She appeared on Memphis radio stations on occasion to encourage young blues performers. She appeared at a memorial concert for Big Bill Broonzy in 1958. "She never laid her guitar down until she could no longer pick it up," the Garons wrote in Woman with Guitar. In 1960, she had a stroke that left her in a wheelchair. Lawlars died the following year, and Minnie suffered another stroke a short time later. She could no longer live on her Social Security paycheck. Readers gifted her money for her assistance, and magazines reported her plight. She spent her remaining years in Jell Nursing Home in Memphis, where she died of a stroke in 1973. She is buried at the New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery in Walls, DeSoto County, Mississippi. The Mount Zion Memorial Fund paid for a headstone paid for by Bonnie Raitt on October 13, 1996, with 34 family members in attendance, including her sister Bob. The ceremony was taped for television by the BBC.

Her headstone is inscribed:

The inscription on the back of her gravestone reads: inscription: "The inscription reads:..."

Character and personal life

Minnie was known as a polished professional and an independent woman who knew how to take care of herself. She came across as feminine and ladylike, wearing expensive clothes and jewelry, but she was outspoken when she had to be and wasn't afraid of confrontation. "Any man fool with her she'd go for them right away," Johnny Shines says. She didn't take no foolishness off them. Anything she can get her hands on would be used, including a guitar, pocket knife, and pistol. She used to smoke even while playing or playing the guitar, and she always had a cup of tea on hand in case she needed to spit. The majority of her music she made was autobiographical; Minnie said a lot of her personal life was dedicated to music.

Minnie was married three times before deciding that no marriage certificates had been found. Casey Bill Weldon, who married in the early 1920s, is thought to have been her first husband. Kansas Joe McCoy, the guitarist and mandolin player, was her second husband, who married in 1929. In 1934, the couple applied for divorce. One of the reasons for McCoy's marriage breakup was the jealousy of Minnie's professional success. Minnie Lawlars, 1939-2004, was the guitarist Ernest Lawlars (Little Son Joe), who became her new musical partner, and she married shortly thereafter; Minnie Lawlars, her union papers, which were available from 1938 to 1979, mention her as Minnie Lawlars. He dedicated songs to her, including "Key to the World," in which he describes her as "the woman I got today" and calls her "the key to the world." Minnie was also believed to have lived with a man named "Squirrel" in the mid- to late 1930s.

Minnie was not religious and seldom went to church; the only time she was reported to have attended church was to see a gospel choir perform. She was baptized shortly before her death, most likely to please her sister Daisy Johnson. At 1355 Adelaide Street, a house in Memphis where she once lived has survived.

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Career

She escaped from home to live on Beale Street in Memphis at the age of 13. For the majority of her teen years, she worked on street corners, occasionally returning to her family's farm when she ran out of money. Her sidewalk performances prompted to a tour of the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus from 1916 to 1920. She returned to Beale Street, with its burgeoning blues scene, and began earning her living by playing guitar and singing, supplementing her income with sex work (at that time, female performers were not allowed to return to sex work due to financial constraints).

In 1929, she began performing with Joe McCoy, her second husband. They were discovered by a Columbia Records talent scout, in front of a barber store, where they were playing for dimes. By a Columbia A&R man, she and McCoy went to record in New York City and were given the names Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie. She and McCoy released a series of albums over the next few years, many as a duet. They recorded "Bumble Bee" for the Vocalion label in February 1930, which they had already recorded for Columbia but not yet published. It became one of Minnie's most well-known songs; she later recorded five versions of it. Minnie and McCoy continued to record for Vocalion until August 1934, only after they had just a few sessions for Decca Records. In September, the couple's last session together was for Decca. In 1935, the couple divorced.

Big Bill Broonzy's autobiography, Big Bill Blues, narrates a contest between Minnie and Broonzy in a Chicago nightclub on June 26, 1933, for the coveted prize of a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin. Both artists were supposed to perform two songs; after Broonzy's "Just a Dream" and "Make My Getaway," Minnie took home the grand prize with "Me and My Chauffeur Blues" and "Looking the World Over." In their biography Woman with Guitar: Broonzy's Blues, Paul and Beth Garon suggested that Broonzy's account may have combined several competitions at various times in their history, rather than the 1930s, as these songs of Minnie's date from the 1940s rather than the 1930s.

Minnie was born in Chicago and by 1935, she had been one of a group of musicians who performed for the record producer and talent hunter Lester Melrose regularly. Minnie, who was exiled from McCoy, began to experiment with new styles and sounds. She appeared on four sides for Bluebird Records in July 1935, returned to the Vocalion label in August, and then appeared at another session for Bluebird in October, this time with Casey Bill Weldon, her first husband. She had played nearly 20 sides for Decca and eight sides for Bluebird by the 1930s, in comparison to her Vocalion work. She toured extensively in the 1930s, mainly in the South.

Minnie returned to recording for the Vocalion brand in 1938, this time with the help of Charlie McCoy, Kansas Joe's brother, on mandolin. She married guitarist and singer Ernest Lawlars, also known as Little Son Joe, around this time. They began recording together in 1939, with Son adding more rhythmic support to Minnie's guitar. They began to perform together in the 1940s and continued to do so into the decade. Minnie had begun playing electric guitar by 1941, and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues" became her biggest hit in May of that year. Two more blues standards were released, "Looking the World Over" and Lawlars' "Black Rat Swing" (issued under the tag "Mr. Memphis Minnie" in the original). Minnie and Lawlars remained in Chicago in the 1940s, where they were often joined by Broonzy, Sunnyland Slim, or Snooky Pryor, and attended several of Chicago's most popular nightclubs. Minnie and Lawlars both performed together and separately in Chicago and Indiana during the 1940s. Minnie used to attend Ruby Lee Gatewood's "Blue Monday" parties on Lake Street. Langston Hughes, a poet who performed at the 230 Club on New Year's Eve, 1942, wrote of her "hard and steady voice" being pushed and stronger by amplification, describing her electric guitar as "a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill."

Minnie lived in Indianapolis and Detroit in the 1940s. In the early 1950s, she returned to Chicago. Clubs had begun recruiting younger and cheaper artists by the late 1940s, and Columbia had begun laying off blues artists, including Memphis Minnie. Since she was unable to adapt to evolving tastes, she moved to smaller brands, such as Regal, Checker, and J.O.B.

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