Various Artists - Rough Guide To Blues Women

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The 1920s was undoubtedly the era of the female blues singer. With their origins in the worlds of vaudeville and jazz music, they enjoyed great commercial success throughout the decade, selling a considerable number of records and packing out clubs and theatres alike. Never has there been another time when women so dominated the genre and made the blues so much their own.

Mamie Smith was the first to emerge from the vaudeville circuit and became the first African-American artist to make a blues recording in 1920 with the featured "Crazy Blues." The immense success of this recording opened the door for many others to follow such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace and Ida Cox.

The classic blues had a great impact also on important rural bluesmen, and here both Kate McTell and Bertha Lee are accompanied by their illustrious bluesmen husbands Messrs Blind Willie McTell and Charley Patton. Likewise, Blind Blake provides typically nimble and ingenious accompaniment for Irene Scruggs — commonly known as "Chocolate Brown" — on "Itching Heel" which demonstrates sublime interplay between the two.