Pat Blythe – All That Jazz Part II…..and music

I’ve spent the past few nights watching Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz. Released in January 2001, Burns gives us a birds-eye view of what he calls “the most original American art form”. A close friend has provided the entire DVD series (big thanks) as a “must watch” and I, being a lover of history (and writing about this very subject) have had my eyeballs glued to the screen. Burns starts off at the turn of the 20^th century taking us through the birth and evolution of jazz music. There are 10 episodes with the final one covering an entire 40 years, from 1961 to 2001.

Pat Blythe – The Women of Blues Revisited, Part I….

I am swamped with another project that is sucking up all my time during the waking hours. I have less than two weeks to complete it and it’s seems to be growing arms and legs I wasn’t expecting. So…..just to rehash a bit of blues history, specifically the ladies, I thought I’d have my editor post this again as many of you have probably not seen it. I wrote three series, Women of Rock, Women of Blues and Women in Song. The Women of Blues was actually inspired by a contemporary whom I saw for the first time a couple of years ago. She had dedicated her latest album to a female blues artist I had never heard of. Read all about her and the women who contributed so, so much to the genre we call the blues. The famous and not so famous. They were tough, talented, single-minded, sexually liberated, passionate and most of them had more balls than the men. Read on, you might even learn something.

Pat Blythe: The Women of Blues

Prologue….

Anyone heard of Memphis Minnie? How about Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Lucille Hegamin, Julia Lee or Maxine Sullivan? Me neither. How about Bessie Smith, Etta James, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, Big Momma Thornton, Dinah Washington or even Janis Joplin. The latter are a smattering of the ladies most frequently thought of or mentioned when we think of great female blues singers….the former, not so much.