TTC Interview
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TAPE: A1210705 [SHOW: 1 A ] [AIRDTE: 0 7 / 0 5 / 2 1 ] [AIRTME: 10:00 - 12:00] [HOST: JENN WHITE] [STORY: RED, WHITE AND THE BLUES ] [CONTENT: EMILY ATKIN, DANIEL SWAIN, SAMANTHA MONTANO] 12:00:00 DISCLAIMER Transcripts of WAMU programs are available for personal use. Transcripts are provided "As Is" without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. WAMU does not warrant that the transcript is error-free. For all WAMU programs, the broadcast audio should be considered the authoritative version. Transcripts are owned by WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio and are protected by laws in both the United States and international law. You may not sell or modify transcripts or reproduce, display, distribute, or otherwise use the transcript, in whole or in part, in any way for any public or commercial purpose without the express written permission of WAMU. All requests for uses beyond personal and noncommercial use should be referred to (202)885-1200. 00:00:08 JENN WHITE This is 1A. I'm Jenn White in Washington and today we celebrate Independence Day with a one hour tribute to an original American art form. We call it Red, White and The Blues. Blues music arose from the African American experience in the South. On the farms and in fields, enslaved Black people sang to keep their spirits up, spread the news and sometimes to relay secret messages. In church, they sang gospel music. At work, the blues. Blues music went on to become the basic DNA for jazz, R&B, rock and roll, rap and most every manner of modern music. On today's program, we'll listen to some blues and learn about this music through the lens of the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. The music we're profiling is being preserved for all time in the National Recording Registry because of its historical, cultural or aesthetic importance to our society. There as much a part of our heritage as "God Bless America", "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "When You Wish Upon a Star". 00:01:11 JENN WHITE (CONTINUED) All of which are also in the registry. Now anyone can nominate a recording for the registry. It just has to be at least 10 years old and there has to be an existing copy. Typically the public nominates hundreds of recordings and then a Blue Ribbon panel of experts adds around 150. From that long list, the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, picks 25 recordings to add to the registry. 00:01:36 CARLA HAYDEN When I look at a list and I see Memphis Minnie 1941, the blues. It's called "Me and My Chauffer Blues". It's a way of saying, wow, not only is the title something, but who was Memphis Minnie. So you want to make sure that people are possibly intrigued and want to dig a little deeper and find out, "Did anybody else record that? And who was Memphis Minnie?" 00:02:05 JENN WHITE Let's dig a little deeper now. Memphis Minnie was born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana in 1897. She started guitar at age 11, ran away from home at 13 and played street corners under the name Kid Douglas. By the end of the 1920s, she was calling herself Memphis Minnie. "Me and My Chauffer Blues" has been recorded over 30 times by everyone from Big Mama Thornton and Nina Simon to Lucinda Williams and The Jefferson Airplane. One of Memphis Minnie's biggest devotees is singer Maria Maldaur. She remembers visiting Minnie's grave in Mississippi. 00:03:13 MARIA MALDAUR I just felt this awesome soulful presence not just of the spirit of Memphis Minnie surely, but of all the others and all the other people that were such expressive artists. And they were doing it so on the natch. They weren't thinking, "Well, I'm going to become, you know, a blues star and make a million dollars." These are people that were expressing their souls on their back porches and expressing themselves about things that were happening to them very immediately. Her songs are very autobiographical, but at the same time very universal. 00:04:01 JENN WHITE Memphis Minnie was one of the meanest guitar players of her day. She would challenge other players to cutting contests and nearly always won. 00:04:09 PETER GURALNICK The unusual thing about Memphis Minnie was the fact that she stood out as one of the few self-accompanied, independent women in the down home blues business. 00:04:20 JENN WHITE Historian and Author Peter Guralnick. 00:04:22 PETER GURALNICK Yeah, as Big Bill Broonzy wrote in his autobiography "Big Bill Blows" and he wrote this with great admiration, "Memphis Minnie played the guitar just like a man." And he describes this cutting contest in which Memphis Mi nnie beats everybody, all the famous blues singers, all the men. All the men because there were no other women involved. Just as in the early days of rock and roll there weren't a lot of early women rockabillies. And it may have had something to do with the difficulties of travel. It may have been an exclusive organization. But I think more than anything it was just -- it was a very hired life and not many women chose it. But Memphis Minnie did to our great edification. 00:05:01 JENN WHITE Between 1929 and 1941, Minnie recorded over 150 songs many of which have become classics like "Me and My Chauffer", "Bumblebee" and "When the Levee Breaks". One of the lucky guitarists to record with Memphis Minnie was Jimmy Rodgers who for years famously played with Muddy Waters and Little Walter. 00:05:22 JIMMY RODGERS Little Walter and I, we made records with her. I enjoyed the old lady. You know, she would tell you what to do and how to do it. And I'd say, "Okay, Minnie, all right." I was young and trying to learn. Greatest day of my life. And play the blues with Memphis Minnie. Yeah. 00:05:40 JENN WHITE Minnie made records into the 1950. In 1960, a stroke put her in a wheelchair, but she never stopped playing guitar. Memphis Minnie died in 1973 at the age of 76. Memphis Minnie and "Me and My Chauffer Blues" recorded in 1941 and added to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2020. From Memphis we go back in time to New York City where the very first blues record was made. It was 1920 and records were becoming big business in the white world. But at that point no company had ever recorded a blues singer. "Crazy Blues" was the song and Mamie Smith was the artist. The song was entered into the National Recording Registry in 1994 as a tribute to its importance in America culture. To tell the story of "Crazy Blues" we have an archivist. 00:06:58 MICHAEL TAFT My name is Michael Taft. I am the head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress. 00:07:05 JENN WHITE An author 00:07:07 LAWRENCE COHN My name is Lawrence Cohn and I'm quite proud of a book I did in 1996 called "Nothing But The Blues: The Music And The Musicians". 00:07:14 JENN WHITE And an activist turned educator. 00:07:17 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER My name is Angela Davis. I am a Professor of History of Consciousness and Feminist studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. I am also the Author of "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism". Mamie Smith was the first vocalist to record the blues. 00:08:05 MICHAEL TAFT Mamie Smith was rather peculiar. It's funny that she was the first to record this kind of blues because she was not primarily a blues singer. At the age of 10, she was on the stage dancing. And she was a dancer and a singer and an actress and she performed in films in the 30s and 40s. She was all -around entertainer, but I don't think she herself would have called herself necessarily a blues singer in the way that perhaps Ma Rainy or Bessie Smith were. 00:08:30 LAWRENCE COHN This people who recorded in the early 20s were working as vaudevillians in various guises as dancers, as comedians, as singers. 00:08:40 ANGELA DAVIS But no Black blues singer had been recorded in 1920. And in a sense it was happenstance that Mamie Smith acquired the opportunity to record "Crazy Blues" earlier in the year. Sophie Tucker had been scheduled for a recording station, but became ill. And Perry Bradford managed to persuade Okeh Records to allow Mamie Smith to do the recording session i nstead. 00:09:14 LAWRENCE COHN And Bradford who I got to know when I was a teenager in the 50s, he wrote these songs and he produced them. And he really is the guy that sold the concept to record companies that Black female vaudevillians could translate to blues and that there was money to be made. 00:09:34 MICHAEL TAFT That recording sold really well. 00:09:37 LAWRENCE COHN Right out of the box, I think they sold something like 10,000 recordings the first week. 00:09:42 ANGELA DAVIS Within a month it had sold over 75,000 copies. 00:09:55 MICHAEL TAFT There was a market there that had not been served.