Forget Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, P.J. Harvey, or Joan Jett- Memphis Minnie may be the greatest lady legend on guitar that ever lived. Lizzie Douglas, whom many call Mother of Rock ‘n’ Roll, was born in Louisiana in 1897, and as the oldest of thirteen children, she answered to no one from the very beginning. She did her own thing, her own way, and left a legacy of 40 years of blues that changed the shape of history. She is famous for her formidable appearance, her gypsy-country-chiffon dresses and silver dollar bracelets, her ease fighting, drinking and chewing tobacco in a man’s world. But most of all, she is remembered for her guitar. She could get that thing to bleed. She was a pioneer of electric guitar, and first in line to try every new technique or development. Not content to be best of the ladies, she was as good or better a guitarist as her male contemporaries and beyond. Blues legend Charlie Patton said without flinching that she was the better guitarist of the two. “She was a guitar king,” he said.
It’s difficult to imagine growing up without Michael Jackson or Miley Cyrus on the airwaves. There’s music blasting from every trendy clothing shop, slick cars with slicker boys inside, cell phone ring tones, advertising jingles. But in the early 1900s, in the Mississippi Delta on Highway 61, there was no recorded music. Just scorching hot weather, backbreaking labour, sorghum and sugarcane, and cotton fields for as far as the eye could see. The Douglas family was dirt poor, like most black families of the time. The kids were expected to help with farming, laundry, domestic labour, childcare, and any other possibilities for a few pennies. Music and entertainment were escape valves from a truly grueling existence. Families and friends would make parties with music and whisky and dancing whenever they could, and little Lizzie paid close scrutiny to the string bands and the rhythms of music. At seven, the virtuoso could already play the banjo, and in 1905, at age eight, her Christmas present was her first guitar.
Lizzie was not the type to meekly accept her lot of farm and field labour, and she was barely a teenager when she ran away from home and joined the circus First, she began playing guitar on the streets of Memphis, where she ultimately became known as Memphis Minnie. Then, she joined the Ringling Brothers traveling circus, gaining valuable experience in entertaining an audience- and learning to take care of yourself as a woman on the road. In Paul and Beth Garon’s biography Woman With Guitar, slide guitarist Johnny Shines recalled, “Any men fool with her she’d go for them right away. She didn’t take no foolishness off them. Guitar, pocket-knife, pistol, anything she get her hand on she’d use it.”
Perhaps hesitation would be anyone’s fall, but the lady was no Minnie mouse. She turned into a “hell cat” early on, good preparation for the mean streets of Memphis. In the early 1900s, Memphis was known as the murder capital of the world, and legend had it, you’d be walking over bodies if you strolled down the street. But Memphis was also known for its legendary Beale Street, still known for the blues today. Minnie would play anywhere she could- on the street, in juke jives, in dives, in the park, at house parties, anywhere they’d listen. She picked up what she could early on from experienced musicians, but “before long, Minnie herself was the reigning blues queen of Memphis, and there was little she could learn from the competition,” her biographers wrote.
Minnie and her lover, Joe McCoy (“Kansas Joe”) were playing in a Beale Street barbershop when a talent scout for Columbia Records heard them. Their song, Bumble Bee, became a huge hit. They also recorded When the Levee Breaks, which was immortalized later by Led Zeppelin, and recorded recently by Bob Dylan. Her guitar work on When the Levee Breaks is still known today as one of the most rhythmically varied accompaniments.
Joe and Minnie were together- but it is not certain whether they were officially married or common law. No marriage license has been found for any of Minnie’s several marriages- the number assumed is three. While Minnie was informally linked to any number of beaus, she was not exactly suited to traditional matrimonial liaisons. Indeed, it is probable that in her early days, before earning a paycheque, she offered herself up for money. This was quite common in the circles of poverty in the time, and quite common among blues women trying to fight their way into an audience. Some musicians recalled Minnie’s days as a “street walker” (Homesick James). She did sing frequently about the topic, though it was not an uncommon theme in blues music. In those days, it may well be that you had two choices- marry one man for life who would pay your way, or remain independent but initially rely on multiple men. The blues were born in the slave fields, yes, but as entertainment or a lifestyle, they began in the brothels, when blacks had limited choices for work. Entertainer of men, or musical entertainer? Many did both.
Regardless of what did or didn’t take place in the days of early Beale Street or the circus, she was with Kansas Joe until they parted ways in 1935. She then married (or became linked with) Little Son Joe Lawlars, who was her partner for more than two decades. She recorded more than 200 songs with him. 
Memphis Minnie’s innovation and rhythm on guitar impressed her contemporaries and her teachers alike. She traveled all over the States, and she easily changed her sets or arrangements to suit the chemistry of her audience. She played anywhere they’d listen, adding country flavour to her blues when she played for white country fans. At least one folk festival, she had to sleep in a field because blacks were banned from the hotel where the other entertainers stayed. But as times changed, so did she- she was one of the first to embrace electric blues.
Minnie’s appearance was more eccentric than sultry, and certainly it showed that she was tough, would take no bullshit, and that she feared nothing. She didn’t chitchat when she performed- she played the guitar, and she sang. She was more spice than sugar, and clearly understood that anything a man could do, she could do better. She would stand on a chair and wave her guitar above her head, decades before the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Even her appearance was rather mannish- though she wore great big earrings and chiffon dresses, often slit way up north on the thigh, perhaps for effect, but more likely for practicality, to allow her to play her instrument. Her voice sometimes sounded masculine, too, though with thighs like those, there was no question. She chewed tobacco and could spit out a wad of Copenhagen mid-song without losing her beat. In a world of hard-drinking, hard-fighting men, Minnie was a hard-drinking woman and no stranger to fighting. She could be mighty sweet, but only until you tried to take advantage of her, or talk down to her. She was also known to toss whisky in your face without provocation- but in an unruly bar world of men without enough women to go around, there was almost certainly provocation, even if no one but Minnie knew of it.
Bluesman Homesick James said, “That woman was tougher than a man. No man was strong enough to mess with her.” Johnny Shines said, “They tell me she shot one old man’s arms off, down in Mississippi. Shot his arm off, or cut it off with a hatchet, something.”
Of course, the rough world of blues was on the fringe of society’s so-called decorum, and even once it morphed into country and rock with Elvis or Johnny Cash, the stories of murders and prisons and fights were still integral to the tradition. Minnie was singing from the early 1900s, through to the ‘50s, and her songs, original or standards, were filled with stories of fighters and murder like every other blues singer. And like all blues, her songs were also about poverty, cheating, God, heartbreak, voodoo, trains, prejudice, the outlaw, travel, sickness. (The Garon biography is a unique source and significant contribution of blues lore, as it documents the lyrics to many of Minnie’s songs, with fascinating background and interpretation.)
Son Joe Lawlars and Memphis Minnie traveled and toured and sang their hearts out until Minnie had a stroke and Son Joe took ill. Literally unable to carry on, they returned to Minnie’s childhood home of Walls, Mississippi. Minnie had no children, and had retained erratic ties with her family, but her sister Daisy cared for the couple nonetheless. Son Joe passed away in 1962, followed by Minnie’s second stroke. Confined to a wheelchair, with impaired speech, she was forced to move into a nursing home, though she lived until 1971. Her sister Daisy was pleased that Minnie was finally baptized in old age, right there in her wheelchair. But Minnie had never been religious like her parents had been: clearly, her true faith was in her music.
Numerous musicians acknowledge Minnie’s pioneering work as lady guitar. Bonnie Raitt, Jefferson Airplane, Zeppelin, Dylan and Big Mama Thornton are just some of her followers. Black poet Langston Hughes immortalized her after watching a New Year’s performance in 1942. He wrote a poem called Here to Yonder that marvels over Minnie and the electric guitar. It was her admirers, too, who paid for her medical care in old age, sending their donations to Daisy to use as needed.
But more than a decade of immobility without music was torture for the king of guitar. Though friends, fans, and admiring musicians came to visit her constantly until her death, Memphis Minnie was miserable. Bluesman Bukka White said, “All she do is sit in her wheelchair and cry and cry.”
Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.
