How the Women of the Classic Blues Got the White Patriarchal Erasure

In 1920, Perry Bradford, a Black composer and publisher, had the crazy idea that African Americans would buy music recorded by Black artists and musicians. He convinced Okeh Records to shellac a vaudeville and cabaret singer from Harlem named Mamie Smith backed by Black jazz musicians. “Crazy Blues” proved to be a smash hit. Within two months of release, it had sold 75,000 copies.

Record company executives (all white) woke up. There was a market here! Money to be made! And so “race music” was coined and advertised. When you have a success in the entertainment field, what do you do? You copy it for as long as the formula holds out. And that’s exactly what Paramount, Columbia, et. al. did. They went out and signed their own Black female singers to contracts.

That’s why all of the first hits were delivered by a cohort of blues queens whose names, with the exception of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith (and possibly Alberta Hunter), you’ve never heard of: Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Edith Wilson, Sippie Wallace and various unrelated Smiths (Trixie and Clara). These women were Black superstars of the era. However, they did not necessarily specialize in the blues. They were versatile theater and cabaret singers who performed a variety of popular music styles. For their race catalogs, the labels wanted blues, and that’s what they captured on record.

In 1926, Paramount Records recorded a Texas street singer and guitarist named Blind Lemon Jefferson. Lightning struck again. The sides sold well, and Jefferson’s popularity initiated a wave of country blues records. These were primarily solo singers who performed their own compositions and accompanied themselves on acoustic guitar. Enshrined saints within that tradition are Charley Patton and Blind Willie McTell. These artists came nowhere near the level of success or renown enjoyed by the blues queens, but their music was valorized by later generations in ways that the music of the neglected and forgotten foremothers of the genre were not.

The Great Depression killed the careers of the Classic Blues queens – vaudeville circuits finally collapsed and the sound itself had fallen out of favor – but the heartfelt renderings of an oppressed Southern Black man still sold, and they were way cheaper to record! Between the Depression and the restrictions of materials (like shellac) imposed by fighting World War Two, the record industry contracted sharply. By the time it began recovery in the 40s, white men had discovered the genre as an artistic expression of authenticity and predictably took it over. Folklorists and collectors, such as John and Alan Lomax, searched for “roots” music in the South and invented a new narrative structured around the following values:

GOOD	INAUTHENTIC
Rural male guitarists	Urban female singers
Solo performers	Use of bands – even jazz bands!
"Primitive" sounding styles	Variety of styles, genres, and instrumentation
Folk expression	Professional entertainers

Artists such as Robert Johnson, Son House, and Lead Belly became central to the emerging canon. The Classic Blues women did not fit the folklorists’ narrative, but while they could not write Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith entirely out of the account, the rest were consigned to the dustbin of history.

The die was cast, and later developments in both the genre itself and the white historiography that developed around it only amplified the erasure. In the latter half of the 40s, the blues went electric in Chicago and unleashed a new cohort of male stars: Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Elmore James. (Shout out to Etta James who cracked the boys club late – in the 60s.) Electric blues spawned Jump Blues. The revival of the record industry introduced local scenes – West Coast Blues (T-Bone Walker), Swamp Blues (Lightenin’ Slim) – into the mix. Piano blues even recognized a white man, Mose Allison, as a legitimate practitioner. Race music got rechristened as Rhythm and Blues and started reaching towards the big money – the white market.

Look at the list of blues stars from the 40s to the 60s and you’ll find few women. The blues world was a man’s world, and, honey girl!, maybe you should direct your efforts towards pop or jazz. The folk revival of the early 60s, although instrumental in resuscitating the careers of still-living country artists (Mississippi John Hurt), did nothing to challenge the younger generation’s acceptance of the sexist lens promoted by early histories (The Country Blues by Robert Charters, 1959) and supposedly definitive record collections (The Anthology of American Folk Music, 1952, by the eccentric and extremely sexist collector, Harry Smith – 4 recordings by women out of 84 tracks). 

When rhythm and blues morphed into a white genre in the mid-fifties, rock and roll was poised for world domination. With no knowledge of or interest in the blues queens who had launched the genre, British and American rockers continued to idolize – and sometimes share the stage with – Delta and Chicago bluesmen. The British invasion, with its covers of past blues hits (Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain” by the Rolling Stones; Howlin’ Wolf’s “Spoonful” by Cream) sealed the deal – and the history.

The blues origin story became: Delta men → electric blues → rock and roll. 

Furthermore, all of the protagonists in this mythical lineage were unproblematically heterosexual, which was not an assertion you could make about the blues queens. Some of them even sang about economic independence (hmm), domestic abuse (sad but understandable), same-sex relationships (abominable), and female desire (what?!?).

No wonder we had to bury the foremothers! But dammit – some of them wouldn’t stay dead! In 1970, Janis Joplin bought a headstone to put on Bessie Smith’s unmarked grave. “The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing.”

— Dr. Robert Philipson

Read more about Dr. Robert Philipson's personal connection to this foray in Where My Mother’s Name Didn’t Come From.

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