Born
June 3, 1897, in Algiers, Louisiana, Lizzie Douglas was raised on a farm
before moving in 1904 to Walls in northern Mississippi. The following
year Douglas was given a guitar for her birthday and quickly learned to
play. A child prodigy, she began playing local parties as "Kid"
Douglas before running away from home to play for tips at Church's Park
( the current W.C. Handy
Park) on Beale Street
in Memphis. During the 1910s
and early 1920s, Douglas adopted the handle of Memphis Minnie and toured
the South, playing tent shows with the Ringling Brothers Circus.
During the late 1920s Minnie began playing guitar with a variety of ad hoc jug bands during Memphis's jug band craze. Minnie also began a common law marriage with Kansas Joe McCoy, a musician with whom she had begun playing and would soon record. Their very first session yielded the hit song "Bumble Bee" (later recorded by Muddy Waters as "Honey Bee"), and McCoy would be her musical partner for the next six years. Within a year of her first recording date, Minnie had logged a half-dozen more sessions, including a reprise of "Bumble Bee" with the Memphis Jug Band. Bukka White claimed that Minnie sang backup on his 1930 gospel recordings. By the time the effects of the Great Depression had shackled the recording industry, Minnie had recorded fifty sides that showcased her powerful voice and energetic guitar picking. She affected wealth as her idol Ma Rainey had done, travelling to shows in luxury cars and wearing bracelets made of silver dollars on her wrists.
During
the 1930s, Minnie moved to Chicago where she set the musical style by
taking up bass and drum accompaniment, anticipating the sound of the 1950s
Chicago blues. After her breakup with Kansas Joe, Minnie married Ernest
Lawlers, known as "Little Son Joe," and continued to record
into the early 1950s. Poor health prompted her to return to Memphis and
forsake the musician's life in 1958. Memphis Minnie was the greatest female
country blues singer, and the popularity of her songs made her one of
the blues most influential artists.
Memphis Minnie died August 6, 1973, in Memphis, Tennessee, and is buried in New Hope Cemetery in Walls, Mississippi.
