List of classic female blues singers
Encyclopedia
The following is a list of 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...

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B

  • Mildred Bailey
    Mildred Bailey
    Mildred Bailey was a popular and influential American jazz singer during the 1930s, known as "The Rockin' Chair Lady" and "Mrs. Swing"...

  • Blue Lu Barker
    Blue Lu Barker
    Blue Lu Barker was an American jazz and blues singer. Her better known recordings included "Don't You Feel My Leg" and "Look What Baby's Got For You."...

  • Gladys Bentley
    Gladys Bentley
    Gladys Bentley was an American blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance.-Biography:Bentley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of American George L. Bentley and his wife, a Trinidadian, Mary Mote...

  • Esther Bigeou
    Esther Bigeou
    Esther Bigeou was an American vaudeville and blues singer. Billed as "The Girl with the Million Dollar Smile", she was one of the classic female blues singers popular in the 1920s....

  • Lucille Bogan
    Lucille Bogan
    Lucille Bogan was an American blues singer, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson...

  • Ada Brown
    Ada Brown
    Ada Brown was an American blues singer. She is best known for her recordings of "Ill Natural Blues", "Break O' Day Blues", and "Evil Mama Blues.-Biography:...

  • Bessie Brown
    Bessie Brown
    Bessie Brown also known as "The Original" Bessie Brown, was an American classic female blues, jazz, and cabaret singer. She sometimes recorded under the pseudonyms of Sadie Green, Caroline Lee, and possibly Helen Richards. Brown was active as a recording artist from 1925 to 1929...

  • Eliza Brown
  • Kitty Brown
    Kitty Brown
    Kitty Brown was an American classic female blues singer. She sometimes used the pseudonyms of Bessie Williams , Jane White, Dixie Gray, Rosa Green and Mazie Leroy. Brown was active as a recording artist from 1923 to the mid 1930s. Her best known tracks were "I Wanna Jazz Some More" and "It's...


G

  • Cleo Gibson
  • Lillian Glinn
    Lillian Glinn
    Lillian Glinn was an American classic female blues and country blues singer and songwriter. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville...

  • Lillian Goodner
    Lillian Goodner
    Lillian Goodner was an African American blues singer, who performed in the classic female blues style that was popular during the 1920s. She was billed as "Sister Lillian: Queen of the Sepias"....

  • Ida Goodson
    Ida Goodson
    Ida Goodson was an American classic female blues and jazz singer plus pianist.-Biography:Goodson was born in Pensacola, Florida, the youngest of seven sisters, six of whom survived to adulthood. Her father and mother both played piano...

  • Fannie May Goosby
  • Coot Grant
    Coot Grant
    Coot Grant was an American classic female blues, country blues, and vaudeville, singer and songwriter. Her own stage craft, plus the double act with her husband and musical partner, Wesley "Kid" Wilson, was popular with African American audiences in the 1910s, 1920s and early 1930s.-Biography:One...


H

  • Lucille Hegamin
    Lucille Hegamin
    Lucille Nelson Hegamin was an American singer and entertainer, and a pioneer African American blues recording artist.-Life and career:...

  • Edmonia Henderson
  • Katherine Henderson
  • Rosa Henderson
    Rosa Henderson
    Rosa Henderson was an American jazz and classic female blues singer, and vaudeville entertainer.-Career:...

  • Edna Hicks
    Edna Hicks
    Edna Hicks was an American blues singer and musician. She is best remembered for her recordings of "Hard Luck Blues" and "Poor Me Blues"....

  • Bertha "Chippie" Hill
  • Mattie Hite
    Mattie Hite
    Mattie Hite was an African American blues singer in the classic female blues style. Her birthplace is unknown, but New York City has been suggested. Around 1915 she moved to Chicago, where she sang at the Panama Club, often with such performers as Alberta Hunter and Florence Mills...

  • Rosetta Howard
    Rosetta Howard
    Rosetta Howard was an American blues singer, who recorded in the 1930s and 1940s.Little is known of her life. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and moved into singing by joining in with jukebox selections at the club where she worked. Around 1932 she began singing professionally...

  • Helen Humes
    Helen Humes
    Helen Humes was an American jazz and blues singer.Humes was successively a teenaged blues singer, band vocalist with Count Basie, saucy R&B diva and a mature interpreter of the classy popular song.-Career:...

  • Alberta Hunter
    Alberta Hunter
    Alberta Hunter was an American blues singer, songwriter, and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith...


J

  • Edith North Johnson
    Edith North Johnson
    Edith North Johnson was an American classic female blues singer, pianist and songwriter. Her most noted tracks were "Honey Dripper Blues", "Can't Make Another Day" and "Eight Hour Woman". She wrote another of her songs, "Nickel's Worth of Liver Blues".-Biography:Born Edith North, in 1928 she...

  • Lil Johnson
    Lil Johnson (blues singer)
    Lil Johnson was an African American singer, who recorded bawdy blues and hokum songs in the 1920s and 1930s....

  • Mary Johnson
    Mary Johnson (singer)
    Mary Johnson was an American classic female blues singer, accordionist and songwriter. Her most noted tracks were "Dream Daddy Blues" and "Western Union Blues." She wrote a number of her own tracks including "Barrel House Flat Blues", "Key To The Mountain Blues" and "Black Men Blues." Johnson...

  • Merline Johnson
    Merline Johnson
    Merline Johnson was an African American blues singer in the 1930s and 1940s, billed as The Yas Yas Girl.Little is known of her life, but she is thought to have been born in Mississippi. She was the aunt of rhythm and blues singer LaVern Baker. She first recorded in Chicago in 1937, on songs...

  • Maggie Jones
    Maggie Jones (blues musician)
    Maggie Jones was an American blues singer and pianist, who recorded thirty-eight songs between 1923 and 1926. She was billed as "The Texas Nightingale." Jones is best remembered for her songs, "Single Woman's Blues," "Undertaker's Blues," and "Northbound Blues."-Biography:She was born Fae Barnes...


M

  • Daisy Martin
    Daisy Martin
    Daisy Martin was an African American actress and blues singer. who performed in the classic female blues style that was popular during the 1920s....

  • Sara Martin
    Sara Martin
    Sara Martin was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as "The Famous Moanin' Mama" and "The Colored Sophie Tucker"...

  • Viola McCoy
    Viola McCoy
    Viola McCoy was an African-American blues singer who performed in the classic female blues style during a career that lasted from the early 1920s to the late 1930s.-Life and career:...

  • Hattie McDaniel
    Hattie McDaniel
    Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind ....

  • Hazel Meyers
    Hazel Meyers
    Hazel Meyers was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville, although on recordings she was billed as a blues artist...

  • Josie Miles
    Josie Miles
    Josie Miles was an American vaudeville and blues singer. She was one of the classic female blues singers popular in the 1920s....

  • Lizzie Miles
    Lizzie Miles
    Lizzie Miles was the stage name taken by Elizabeth Mary Landreaux , an African American blues singer.-Career:...

  • Florence Mills
    Florence Mills
    Florence Mills, born Florence Winfrey , known as the "Queen of Happiness," was an African American cabaret singer, dancer, and comedian known for her effervescent stage presence, delicate voice, and winsome, wide-eyed beauty.-Life and career:A daughter of former enslaved parents, Nellie and John...

  • Monette Moore
    Monette Moore
    Monette Moore was an American jazz and blues singer.Moore was raised in Kansas City and then moved to New York City early in the 1920s; she moved often in that decade, working in Chicago, Dallas and Oklahoma City...


S

  • Bessie Smith
    Bessie Smith
    Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...

  • Clara Smith
    Clara Smith
    Clara Smith was an American classic female blues singer. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors.-Career:...

  • Laura Smith
    Laura Smith (blues singer)
    Laura Smith was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. She is best known for her recordings of "Gonna Put You Right In Jail" and her version of "Don't You Leave Me Here". She led Laura Smith and her Wild Cats, and worked with Clarence Williams and Perry Bradford...

  • Mamie Smith
    Mamie Smith
    -External links:* African American Registry* with photos* with .ram files of her early recordings* NPR special on the selection on "Crazy Blues" to the 2005...

  • Ruby Smith
    Ruby Smith
    Ruby Smith was an American classic female blues singer. She was a niece, by marriage, of the better known Bessie Smith, who discouraged Ruby from a recording career. Nevertheless, following Bessie's death in 1937, Ruby went on to record twenty-one sides between 1938 and 1947...

  • Trixie Smith
    Trixie Smith
    Trixie Smith was an African American blues singer, recording artist, vaudeville entertainer, and actress. She made four dozen recordings.-Biography:...

  • Victoria Spivey
    Victoria Spivey
    Victoria Spivey was an American blues singer and songwriter. She is best known for her recordings of "Dope Head Blues" and "Organ Grinder Blues", and Spivey variously worked with her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey, and with Bob Dylan, Lonnie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence...

  • Mary Stafford
    Mary Stafford (singer)
    Mary Stafford was an American cabaret singer in the classic blues style. In January, 1921, she became the first African American woman to record for Columbia Records. She toured widely throughout the mid-Atlantic in the 1920s and into the 1930s...

  • Hannah Sylvester
    Hannah Sylvester
    Hannah Sylvester was an African American blues singer who performed in the classic female blues style that was popular during the 1920s. She was billed as "Harlem's Mae West"....


T

  • Eva Taylor
  • Sister Rosetta Tharpe
    Sister Rosetta Tharpe
    Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...

  • Bessie Tucker
    Bessie Tucker
    Bessie Tucker was an American classic female, country, and Texas blues, singer and songwriter. Her best-known songs are "Penitentiary" and "Fryin' Pan Skillet Blues". Little is known of her life outside the music industry. Her known recording history comprised just twenty-four tracks, seven of...

  • Sophie Tucker
    Sophie Tucker
    Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...

  • Lavinia Turner

W

  • Sippie Wallace
    Sippie Wallace
    Sippie Wallace was an American singer-songwriter. Her early career in local tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by herself or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas...

  • Ethel Waters
    Ethel Waters
    Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...

  • Georgia White
    Georgia White
    Georgia White was an African American blues singer, most prolific in the 1930s and 1940s.Little is known of her early life. By the late 1920s she was singing in clubs in Chicago, and she made her first recording, "When You're Smiling, the Whole World Smiles With You," with Jimmie Noone's...

  • Edith Wilson
    Edith Wilson (singer)
    Edith Wilson was an American blues singer and vaudeville performer.-Biography:Born Edith Goodall in Louisville, Kentucky, Wilson's first professional experience came in 1919 in Louisville's Park Theater. Lena Wilson and her brother, Danny, performed in Louisville; Edith married Danny and joined...

  • Lena Wilson
    Lena Wilson
    Lena Wilson was an American blues singer in the classic female blues style. She recorded "Chiropractor Blues" and "Love Ain't Blind No More,".-Life and career:...


External links

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