of a more famous Memphis Minnie; if they knew of her at all, they may have assumed she and Minnie Wallace (who recorded only under her own name, never as Memphis Minnie) were the same. The name Memphis Minnie, as a character in plays, actually preceded its appearance on Memphis Minnie’s records.)5
So it remained the tavern and the phonograph record that provided that the contexts for Minnie’s contemporary press coverage. The jukebox, a medium of both the tavern and the record, became the defining factor in Billboard’s approach to music. Whereas newspaper reviews were consumer-oriented, Billboard rated records in terms of their appeal to jukebox operators. And Minnie’s records were highly rated as likely to bring “coinage to the race locations.” She was even hailed as “the outstanding race blues singer of the day” in one review. Just to sample excerpts from a few reviews:
Me and My Chauffeur Blues/Can’t Afford to Lose My Man: “In the race register, the blues singing of Memphis Minnie always makes for coin machine magic at the Harlem spots.” (January 30, 1943)
Looking the World Over: “Operators servicing the out-and-out race business have a natural in Memphis Minnie’s Looking the World Over. The outstanding race singer of the day, Miss Minnie again impresses with her blues chant that tells how she sowed her wild oats, and now that she has had her fun is ready to settle down with her man.” (February 20, 1943)
I’m So Glad/Mean Mistreater Blues: “It’s top in race shouting that Memphis Minnie delivers, singing it way deep down and phrasing it blue as the guitar and string bass beat out a throbbing rhythmic accompaniment for her own selections.” (May 3, 1947)
Fish Man Blues: “An old hand at shouting out the backbiting race blues, Memphis Minnie stirs up plenty of excitement with her sultry and salty singing here. With a terrific rock to her chant, and the accompanying guitar, bass and drums pounding out a driving rhythm, gal spins out a blues classic for Fish Man Blues in which she tells her man to hold off his bait … Race spots will shower coin pieces on this platter, particularly for Fish Man Blues.” (September 13, 1947)
While Billboard’s reviews indicated sales potential for Minnie’s records, the discs never sold quite well enough for her to make the magazine’s charts for “race” or rhythm & blues records, which only began in October 1942 as the Harlem Hit Parade, leaving the earlier years of blues releases in uncharted territory.
In reconstructing blues history, researchers have relied heavily on the Defender and other black papers as well as Billboard when seeking what press coverage there was of blues artists. But with the advances in digitalization and microfilming, ads and record reviews have come to the light from a far-flung variety of daily and weekly local newspapers revealing that, while many readers may not have known Minnie’s music well if at all, a substantial general (primarily white) readership at least saw Minnie’s name in print.
In a series of ads that ran on the “Farm News” pages of a number of small weeklies in Texas and Oklahoma from August 1930 to May 1931, Brunswick branches in Dallas and Kansas City advertised more records by Minnie (on Vocalion) than by any other artist, black or white. Leroy Carr’s Vocalion discs were also regularly listed in the ads, which sometimes also advertised blues by Charley Jordan, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lee Green, Robert Wilkins, Lucille Bogan, Funny Paper Smith and others, along with gospel, pop, jazz and hillbilly releases and a picture of a Brunswick portable phonograph in every ad. These ads, in the Columbus (Texas) Colorado Citizen, the Hearne (Texas) Democrat, the Eufala (Oklahoma) Indian Journal and others, directed buyers simply to “Brunswick and Vocalion Dealers” and also solicited “Responsible Merchants” from areas where the company had no dealers.6
Advertising for records hit its lowest point during the remainder of the 1930s. But, with a boost from the wartime and early postwar economy, many music shops and other stores that carried records, including furniture dealers, jewelers, and department stores, actively advertised beginning in early 1945. Minnie’s Columbia releases were listed in store ads in such diverse periodicals as the Canton (Ohio) Repository, Naugatuck (Connecticut) Daily News, Council Bluffs (Iowa) Nonpareil, Las Cruces (New Mexico) Sun-News, Anniston (Alabama) Star and Charleston (West Virginia) Daily News. These stores listed a number of releases in each ad—pop, country, jazz and classical, with typically only a few blues, if any. Sometimes Minnie was the only blues artist listed in ads alongside Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Harry James. The widespread coverage was evidence of Minnie’s status as a top Columbia artist and of the broad reach of Columbia’s major-label distribution. Columbia also included Minnie in ads promoting its roster in the entertainment trade magazine Variety in the 1940s.
Columbia and other labels also provided review copies to newspapers. While Billboard and the Associated Negro Press affiliates reviewed Minnie’s records most frequently, again her records occasionally popped up in the mainstream press, including some major outlets. Sometimes the releases were merely listed but some reviewers also offered opinions. The Chicago Tribune, no less, noted Cherry Ball and I Don’t Want No Woman I Have to Give My Money To by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie on November 30, 1930, along with other Vocalion and Brunswick records by Robert Wilkins, Joe Callicott and Lee Green.7 On November 14, 1935, the San Antonio Light recognized her Joe Louis Strut as an example of recent songs with topical themes.8 Minnie made the Tribune again on March 25, 1945, when critic Will Davidson enthused, “There is an art to appreciating good blues singing, but how can you miss the strange appeal of Minnie in When You Love Me or Love Come and Go?”9 Columbia evidently put extra promotional push behind this Okeh single as part of its first batch of releases upon the lifting of a record ban imposed by the American Federation of Musicians in 1942.10 It was also reviewed in the New York Herald Tribune (by music critic Paul Bowles, a noted novelist and composer), Times-Picayune, New Orleans States, Cleveland Plain Dealer and Greensboro Daily News.11
A scattering of ads and news items from 1946 help track Minnie’s touring that year, perhaps booked by Ferguson Brothers of Indianapolis, a leading agency in the representation of black entertainers of the era. Her appearance in Ocala, Florida, on June 8, was publicized in the black press, including the Defender and Pittsburgh Courier, while other ads appeared in local daily newspapers including the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, Kokomo (Indiana) Tribune and Danville (Virginia) Bee for concerts in those cities.12 In several ads, in Chicago and on tour dates, the billing was to “Memphis Minnie and Her Electric Guitar,” her amplified instrument already having been documented as a strong element of her live shows by Langston Hughes’s Defender review of her show at the 230 Club. An October 7, 1944, Martin’s Corner Defender ad touted her as “Master of Electric Guitar.” It raises the question of how much more powerful her live performance sound may have been than on her studio recordings; likewise, several 1946 tour dates advertised her with Leo Hines’s fourteen-piece orchestra, a configuration that was never captured in her recording sessions. Occasional ads and articles prove, or sometimes at least suggest, that she was also performing for white or mixed audiences, presumably on the excursion steamer mentioned in the Defender in 1936, at black and tan clubs, on her 1946 concert tour where separate white seating was advertised in Virginia, and at Schindler’s Theatre in Chicago in 1951, where she was advertised in the December 22 Defender as “Queen of the Blues.” A Chicago Tribune notice of November 9, 1952, indicates that the folk music movement was attuned to her music as well, as she took Big Bill Broonzy’s place at a “Come for to Sing” program at the Blue Note.
During her post-Columbia career Minnie’s presence in the press declined, although Billboard did continue to cover her releases on Regal, Checker and J.O.B., and her Chicago appearances were still advertised for a few years in the Defender. Just as her star was waning with the black American blues audience, European blues enthusiasts began writing about her.
