BALL AND CHAIN BLUES - MEMPHIS MINNIE (1937) on Vocalion 78RPM - RARE 'Queen of the Country Blues' скачать в хорошем качестве

BALL AND CHAIN BLUES - MEMPHIS MINNIE (1937) on Vocalion 78RPM - RARE 'Queen of the Country Blues'

Understood to have been written by Memphis Minnie under her pseudonym Minnie McCoy, Ball and Chain Blues is a song of desperate love and ultimate despair. Released on the Vocalion label in 1937, the song was recorded August 22, 1935; one of her six recording sessions in Chicago that year. Ball And Chain Blues features Memphis Minnie's vocals as she accompanies herself on guitar with Black Bob Hudson on piano and Bill Settles on bass. Memphis Minnie was born a short distance south of Memphis, Tennessee, in Tunica County, Mississippi. As a child, she also lived in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans before she and her family returned to Mississippi. At the youthful age of 13, she ran away from home and ended up living on Beale Street in Memphis, entertaining with various jug bands and also performing solo as a singer-guitarist. At the time, she was known as Kid Douglas rather than by her birth name, Lizzie Douglas. She reportedly would return to her family home in Wells, Mississippi, when she had no money but would soon purse her musical passion of performing on the streets of Memphis. She became quite well known as a musician and began touring with vaudeville-type shows and the Ringling Brothers Circus. It was in the early 1920s that Kid Douglas, as she was still known, married her first husband, Memphis Jug Band guitarist Casey Bill Weldon. It was soon after marrying her second husband, Wilbur McCoy, that she and McCoy travelled to New York to record for Columbia Records. It was there that both she and her new husband were renamed as Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy by a Columbia Records A&R man. With mounting recording successes, she and McCoy moved to Chicago, admiring the city as the capital of the blues and leading to Memphis Minnie establishing herself as the Queen of Chicago Blues. After enjoying much success as a duo, recording for both Columbia and Vocalion Records, Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy divorced in 1935. Minnie adapted well to the advance of electric blues, transforming her guitar playing and becoming a pioneer of the electric Chicago Blues, a credit of which is often overlooked in favor of the likes of Muddy Waters. Memphis Minnie is known to have recorded nearly 200 songs over the span of her remarkable career. She continued to record into the 1950s, retiring almost wholly in 1957, although she did continue in a much limited capacity on occasion. In 1960 she suffered a stroke that ultimately confined her to a wheelchair. In later years, Memphis Minnie was a resident of a Memphis nursing home. A stroke in 1973 took her life at the age of 76. Of note, Bonnie Raitt is known to have paid for a headstone to mark Memphis Minnie's grave located in the New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery in Walls, Mississippi, a town where she and her family re-settled in her youth after returning from New Orleans. The headstone was placed in 1996. I recorded this video of my original 1937 78RPM record being played on my turntable to share the experience of playing 78s with those who also enjoy the hobby and history of shellac records, especially that of Blues music and of Memphis. I do not claim or own, nor imply ownership, of the song or music recording in any way. Lyrics I'm goin' down by the sea I wanna to carry me a ball and chain I'm goin' down by the sea I wanna to carry me a ball and chain I wanna jump overboard and drown Just because I can't wear my baby's name But I'm goin' to get him Do him like a pig in a fattenin' pen [where he go to die] Yes, I'm goin' to get him Do him like a pig in a fattenin' pen I'm goin' to put him up for safekeepin' Until I get back home again Just as sure The Lord sits up in heaven above Just as sure The Lord sits up in heaven above You know your life ain't worth livin' If you can't be with the one you love Well, I know somebody Somebody's been talkin' to you Yes, I know somebody Somebody's been talkin' to you I don't need no tellin' I've been watchin' the way you do play it boys, play it yes, man, yes, man boy, you know that's mighty mellow (laugh) here I go now Here I go with my ball and chain Here I go now With my ball and chain I'm wanna jump in the sea Just because I can't wear my baby's name Ain't this a cryin' shame!