Memphis minnie biography early life school

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"She didn't take no foolishness off them. Guitar, pocket-knife, pistol, anything she got her hands on, she'd use it; y'know Memphis Minnie used to be a hell-cat."

During the 1920s, she reportedly married Will Weldon, also known as Casey Bill.

Casey Bill), circa 1920s; Joe McCoy, 1929-1934; Earnest Lawlars (a.k.a. Singles from the session included "Broken Heart" and a re-recording of "Me and My Chauffeur Blues." The following year, she released her last commercial recording after 24 years in blues music, "Kissing in the Dark" and "World of Trouble" on the JOB label.

Within the next few years, Minnie's health began to fail.

Lizzie ran away from home to play at Church’s Park for tips as a young teenager. At the time, women were highly valued-along with whiskey and cocaine-and Beale Street was one of the first places in the country where women could perform in public. She joined Ringling Brothers Circus and toured the South in the WWI era.

She returned to Memphis in the 20’s and its Beale Street blues scene, being discovered there by a Columbia Records talent scout in 1929, thus recording in the later part of the year as Memphis Minnie.

Accompanied by her second husband, guitarist Kansas Joe McCoy, her first song, Bumble Bee was a success.

By the end of the 1930s, Minnie had recorded nearly 20 sides for Decca Records and eight sides for the Bluebird label. Little Son Joe), 1939.

For nearly three decades, Memphis Minnie was one of the most influential blues artists in the United States. Lawlars dedicated songs to her, including “Key to the World,” in which he affectionately referred to her as “the woman I got now” and “the key to the world.” They continued to perform and record together through the 1940s, with Minnie playing electric guitar and creating blues standards like “Me and My Chauffeur Blues.”

Electric Blues Pioneer

Memphis Minnie was one of the first blues musicians to embrace electric guitars, long before artists like Muddy Waters or Jimi Hendrix popularized their use.

Her bold persona—spitting tobacco while wearing chiffon ball gowns—defied societal norms for women at the time.

Economic hardships also plagued her career. Like many Black artists during the Great Depression and beyond, Minnie was grossly underpaid despite her success. She recorded over one hundred sides before retiring in the late nineteen fifties.

In 1952, Minnie recorded a session for the legendary Chess label, when it was just two months old. She was buried in New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery in Walls, Mississippi.

Across her career, Minnie recorded over 180 songs for labels like Columbia Records, Decca, Bluebird, Okeh, and Checker. She and her family, relocated to Walls, Mississippi, just south of Memphis, when she was about seven years old, in 1904.

For Christmas in 1905 she received a guitar and swiftly learned how to play it, plus the banjo.

The trauma provoked Minnie to have a second stroke.

Illness Forced Retirement

By the mid-1960s Minnie had entered the Jell Nursing Home and she could no longer survive on her social security income. The news of her plight began to spread, and magazines such as Living Bluesand Blues Unlimited appealed to their readers for assistance.

Later that year, she and McCoy released "I'm Talking About You" on Vocalion. She writes for beltez.com and Academia-Research.com. Though she inspired as many men as women, her influence was particularly strong on female musicians, her disciples including her niece Lavern Baker, a rock and R&B pioneer in her own right, as well as Maria Muldaur (who released a 2012 tribute CD) Bonnie Raitt (who paid for her headstone), Rory Block, Tracy Nelson, Saffire and virtually every other guitar-slinging woman since.