Hoodoo Lady

Album review

Born in Algiers, LA, in 1897, Lizzie Douglas forged a reputation as Memphis Minnie during the late '20s and throughout the '30s by singing topical blues tunes in a powerful voice while strumming the guitar, sometimes with piano, mandolin, and additional guitar accompaniment. Although her career extended well into the 1940s and she was still active in the '50s, Minnie is mainly remembered for her sanguine contribution to the developing Midwestern urban blues scene of the 1930s. In 2008 the U.K.'s Snapper label came out with a 22-track Memphis Minnie collection and chose to call it Hoodoo Lady, instantly generating confusion between their product and the identically titled benchmark Columbia Roots & Blues collection of 1991. Of that disc's 18 titles, only three are included in the Snapper edition, and for this reason the two complement each other beautifully. It's worth having the Columbia disc just to be able to savor her rendition of "If You See My Rooster," during which she anticipates the howling of Howlin' Wolf (who revived this tune many years later) by crowing gently like a chanticleer. Snapper's Hoodoo Lady is equally fine, and includes a rowdy singalong number called "Shout the Boogie." Owning one or both of these excellent samplers will enable the listener to decide whether or not to pursue Memphis Minnie's complete early recordings as released in chronological order by the Document and Wolf labels, or to shop around and piece together a unified history of her entire recording career.
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