Various Artists – Female Blues Singers Vol. 6 E/F/G 1922-1928 / Document CD-5510

Description

Document Records Compact Disc-CDDOC5510

1922-1928 Dorothy Everetts Madam Hurd Fairfax Miss Frankie Hattie Garland Cry Babyl Godfrey Lillian Goodner Georgia Gorham Ruby Gowdy and Betty Gray

Dorothy Everetts
01 – Macon blues
02 – Fat mouth blues

Madam Hurd Fairfax
03 – I`m so glad trouble don`t last always
04 – Somebody`s knocking at your door

Miss Frankie
05 – You can`t guess how good it is (`till you try it for yourself)
06 – Those creeping sneaking blues
07 – I need a good man bad
08 – I can`t be worried long

Hattie Garland
09 – You used to be sugar blues
10 – Blue and all by myself
11 – Strange woman`s dream
Cry Baby Godfrey
12 – Sweet baby, goodbye!

Lillian Goodner
13 – Chicago blues
14 – No one can toddle like my cousin Sue
15 – Awful moanin` blues
16 – Ramblin’
17 – Four flushing papa (you`ve got to play me straight)
18 – Gonna get somebody`s daddy (just wait and see)

Georgia Gorham
19 – A little kind treatment (is exactly what I need)
20 – Broadway blues

Ruby Gowdy
21 – Moanful wailin` blues
22 – Florida flood blues
23 – Breath and britches blues

Betty Gray
24 – Mean old bed bug blues (take c)
25 – Loud and wrong (take a)

Informative booklet notes by David Evans
Detailed discography.

This volume features a mixture of styles from the down-home vocals of Dorothy Everetts to the precise performance of Cry Baby Godfrey whose vocals are typical of vaudeville where so many Classic Blues singers tread the boards. As with all of the volumes in this series, there are some great accompanists here including Porter Granger, Eubie Blake and Bubber Miley. The female blues singers who made records in the 1920s and early 1930 are often simplistically characterized as “vaudeville” artists. This series of fourteen, concentrating on singers who made only a handful of recordings and who mostly remain biographically obscure, reveals the true diversity of the female artists of this era.

While the vaudeville theatres and travelling tent shows were probably the main venues for most of them, some sang in cabarets and others in low-down barrel houses. Some were vaudeville veterans whose careers stretched back to the teens or even earlier, while others were young new arrivals on the stage. Yet others sound as though they had just emerged from a rough saloon and house party environment. Some created their own excellent song material, while others were merely the vehicles for ambitious song-writers who often also served as their accompanists. Some are obscure and many leave us wishing they had been more extensively recorded. Whatever the case, they fill out the picture of the blues of this era and present plenty of fine musical moments and material of great interest.