Red hot mamas

Older women got their mojos workin' too

by Norman Weinstein

Picasso once remarked that it took him a lifetime to become young, and that principle came to mind as I was listening to Roll Over, Ms. Beethoven, a reissue compilation on the Prestige label. Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, and Lucille Hegamin are the featured performers, and they all began their singing careers in the '20s. These Prestige recordings were made in the '60s, when the artists were in their late 50s or early 60s, evidence of an implausibly productive "second wind." Although these are Hegamin's final recordings, Spivey went on to have some success on her own record label for another decade, and Hunter achieved international renown through her Columbia recordings, which were produced in her 80s!

This collection makes you appreciate anew the impact a lifetime of hard living has on women recording blues. From Janis Joplin to Sue Foley, blues women of the last 30 years have proven that youth and race aren't barriers to artistic and commercial success. But there are fewer models for older blues women. We're used to seeing senior blues men tour and do significant work late into life, from Mississippi Fred McDowell to the current crop of elder statesmen -- R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and, of course, B.B. King. Where are their equivalent models among women? Sippie Wallace performed into old age, Koko Taylor is getting up there (b. 1935), but otherwise the examples are few and far between. What kind of wind can a blues belter past her "prime" have? What makes her message worth heeding?

Roll Over, Ms. Beethoven is a too-cute retitling of an LP originally called Songs We Taught Your Mother, that title evoking a proud authority (this is volume eight of Prestige's Bluesville Years reissue series). Roll Over adds to the dozen songs on the vinyl release (four by each of the singers) six additional tracks culled from Woman Blues, a Victoria Spivey session with guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Apart from those Spivey/Johnson numbers, the singers are backed by a remarkable group of old jazzsters: clarinettist Buster Bailey, tuba player Sidney de Paris, trombonist J.C. Higginbotham, pianist Cliff Johnson, and drummer Zutty Singleton.

The magic begins a minute into the first track, Hunter's "I Got Myself a Working Man." With an insinuating tone and a spryly sexy lilt, Hunter gives you the lowdown about her man. "He'll never win no beauty contest, and goodness knows he don't dress fine. Yes, he's healthy and ambitious, and lays it on the line." There's fury, sexuality, racial pride, feminism, all concentrated in every word. A lifetime's worth of the blues compressed into every note. And while Hunter carries on, Bailey's clarinet trills outrageously, de Paris's tuba honks gruffly, Higginbotham's trombone yawns and slurs.

Although not as lavishly theatrical as Hunter (who grew even more dramatic in her 80s), Spivey and Hegamin also possess that earth-shattering capacity to energize traditional blues lyrics. They do so through carefully controlled vibrato and odd phrasing (Spivey throughout her career extended ends of verses into disconcerting wails), and by turning songs into miniature dramas heralding feminine power and resiliency. There's a disarming matter-of-factness in Spivey's sung claim that she's "a red hot mama" who can set a city ablaze. There's a smoldering yet focused self-respect and pride in Hegamin's "Arkansas Blues," a classic song about a woman taking a train back home after betrayals by men. The songs convey a stately elegance; they're delivered with perfect diction and tonal clarity -- pristine, yet never prissy.

These performances are even more captivating if you hear them juxtaposed against the performers' original '20s recordings (all on the import Document label). The musical qualities of the voices have changed remarkably little over the decades. The difference? These old blues woman sound as if they'd earned the right to sing the blues. They've become young -- not young again, but young for the first time -- by touching that wellspring of wisdom a long life well lived can bring.