Memphis Minnie
Posted on January 23, 2013 
Lizzie Douglas (a.k.a. Memphis Minnie) was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter born in Algiers, Louisiana. She was born on June 3, 1897 in Algiers, LA, a city located near the mouth of the Mississippi River, across from the old slave docks in New Orleans.
Minnie was the first of thirteen children born to Abe and Gertrude Douglas, who were Baptist sharecroppers. In 1904 Minnie moved with her family to Walls, Mississippi, located just south of Memphis. Soon after the move, Minnie's parents gave her a guitar for her birthday. She quickly learned how to play her guitar and began entertaining at parties in her neighborhood, picking up the nickname "Kid Douglas." When she got a little older, "Kid" often snuck into Memphis, where she sang and played in parks and on the street corners around town for tips, meeting other musicians and getting her first taste of the early Memphis blues scene.She also went by the names Texas Tessie, Minnie McCoy, and Gospel Minnie
The blues scene in the 1920s and 1930s was diverse in style--spanning classic, urban, and country blues--but almost completely homogenous in terms of gender. Men dominated the stages of juke joints and nightclubs, with very few women breaking the ranks of blues musicians. However, there were a few exceptions who made their mark. One such woman was Memphis Minnie, the most significant female country blues singer to emerge during that era.
She is credited as being one of the first blues artists--male or female--to use the electric guitar, preceding Muddy Waters' use of the instrument by a year. Memphis Minnie's style of guitar playing reflected how she lived her life--hard-driving, passionate, and contrary to what was expected of women at the time. Although she made numerous recordings over the course of a career which spanned three decades, none of them captured the raw energy of the live performances that earned her a place next to other female blues greats like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Fortunately, the power of her musical style lives on through the many well-known blues performers influenced by this dynamic musician, including Brewer Phillips, Big Momma Thornton, and Koko Taylor, as well as Rock & Roll artists such as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and the Rolling Stones.
For several years, Minnie was a member of the Memphis Jug Band and recorded with several artists. In 1929 Minnie was discovered by a talent scout from Columbia Records and recorded her first song, "Bumble Bee," under the name of Memphis Minnie, along with her second husband, the guitarist Kansas Joe McCoy (her first husband was guitarist Casey Bill Weldon). The recording brought the pair enough recognition to move on to Chicago, the hub of the blues scene, where Minnie would live for the next twenty-five years. Besides being a woman in a male-dominated music scene, Minnie literally "stood out" from other musicians by playing lead guitar while standing, at a time when everyone else played their guitars sitting down. She also tried new styles of music, new picking styles, and new instruments. Minnie was the first to record with what came to be known as the "classic" 1950s blues combo: electric guitar, piano, bass, and drums. It has also been noted that Minnie was among the first to play the electric guitar in 1943, at least one year before Muddy Waters did. Writer Langston Hughes described her performance in an article about her in the January 9, 1943, Chicago Defender, noting, "She grabs the microphone and yells, 'Hey now!' Then she hits a few deep chords at random, leans forward ever so slightly on her guitar, bows her head and begins to beat out...a rhythm so contagious that often it makes the crowd holler out loud....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."
Unfortunately, Minnie was never recorded playing her characteristic hard-driving electric sound. Minnie, like many other African-American blues artists, was essentially controlled by the impresario Lester Melrose, who handled all the details of the recording business for most of the "race record" labels during that era. Melrose instructed his musicians to record a toned-down version of the blues, a formulaic approach that became known as the Melrose Sound, the Bluebird Beat, the Melrose Mess, or the Melrose Machine. Even Minnie's recordings for other labels such as Decca failed to capture her spirited approach to the blues. However, Minnie's willingness to teach and nurture other young musicians ensured that her style was passed on to the next generation of blues artists.
In addition to watering down her music, the record labels prevented Minnie from reaping the economic benefits of her success. One of her protegés, Brewer Phillips, conveyed that Minnie claimed to have been "messed around in the music" and gave him the advice, "You can learn to play, but don't let them take your money." In 1958 Minnie and third husband Little Son Joe returned to Memphis, and lived in poverty. Aside from an occasional live radio spot, Minnie was no longer performing; her last performance was at a memorial for her friend and fellow musician, Bill Broonzy, in 1959. She had a stroke in 1960, Joe died in 1961, and shortly thereafter Minnie suffered another debilitating stroke which left her confined to a wheelchair for the last thirteen years of her life. Her sister, Daisy, cared for Minnie during her remaining years.
She died on August 6, 1973 and is buried in Memphis, Tennessee.