Memphis Minnie

Memphis Minnie McCoy (born June 3, 1897 - died August 6, 1973) was an American Blues musician.

Born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, she was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians an

Memphis Minnie McCoy (born June 3, 1897 - died August 6, 1973) was an American Blues musician.

Born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, she was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians and guitarists of all time. Minnie recorded for forty years, virtually unheard of for any woman in show business at the time, and possibly unique among female blues artists. A flamboyant character who wore bracelets made of silver dollars, she was the biggest female blues singer from the early Depression years through World War II. One of the first blues artists to take up the electric guitar, in 1942, she combined her Louisiana-country roots with Memphis-blues to produce her unique country-blues sound; along with Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, she took country blues into electric urban blues, paving the highway for giants like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Jimmy Rogers to travel from the small towns of the south to the big cities of the north. She was married three times, and each husband was an accomplished blues guitarist: Casey Bill Weldon of the Memphis Jug Band, Joe McCoy (a.k.a. "Kansas Joe") later of the Harlem Hamfats, and Ernest Lawlers (a.k.a. "Little Son Joe").