Lillian Glinn was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 classic female blues

Classic female blues

Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female vocalists accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles, and were the...

 and country blues

Country blues

Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...

 singer and songwriter. She spent most of her career in black

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

 vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

. Her most popular recordings were "Black Man Blues," "Doggin' Me Blues" and "Atlanta Blues." The blues historian, Paul Oliver

Paul Oliver

-Biography:Oliver was a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development , and from 1978-88 was Associate Head of the School of Architecture. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Gloucestershire...

, commented that there a number of women blues singers who "deserve far greater recognition than they have had" and that one such was Lillian Glinn.

Biography

Glinn was born in Hillsboro, Texas

Hillsboro, Texas

Hillsboro is a city in and the county seat of Hill County in Central Texas. The population was 8,232 at the 2000 census.Hillsboro, located on Interstate 35 where I-35E and I-35W meet south of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, is the primary center for trade and commerce in Hill County...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and later moved to Dallas.

She was first noticed singing spirituals

Spiritual (music)

Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...

 in church by her future fellow performer Hattie Burleson. Under Burleson's guidance, Glinn became successful in vaudeville, and by 1927 was signed to a recording contract

Recording contract

A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...

 by Columbia

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

. Glinn took part in six separate recording sessions in a two year period up to 1929. She recorded a total of twenty-two tracks. Her speciality was singing slow blues ballads utilising her rich and heavy contralto

Contralto

Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...

 voice

Human voice

The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...

. Her songs concentrated on the harsher side of life and sometimes included sexual innuendo. Her recordings gained her national recognition, and included her April 1928 recording of "Shake It Down". Her sessions took place variously in New Orleans and Atlanta, as well as her home base of Dallas.

The author and researcher, David Evans, noted that "it is quite likely that many of Lillian Glinn's blues without any listed composer were her own material. If so, she would be the exception among Columbia's female blues singers", he concluded.

Following this period of activity, Glinn retreated back to church based life, and moved to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 where she married the Rev. O.P. Smith. Her future became distant from her previous professional career.

Her entire recorded work was made available in 1994 by Document Records

Document Records

Document Records is a British record label that specializes in early American blues, bluegrass, gospel, spirituals jazz, and other rural American genres , generally made between 1900 and 1945...

.

The date and place of her death and all other whereabouts remain unknown, although she was interviewed and photographed by Paul Oliver in 1971.

Compilation discography

Year	Title	Record label
1987	Lillian Glinn & Mae Glover	Story of the Blues
1994	Complete Recorded Works (1927 1929)	Document Document Records Document Records is a British record label that specializes in early American blues, bluegrass, gospel, spirituals jazz, and other rural American genres , generally made between 1900 and 1945...