By 1937, the Texas Tessie sides were no longer listed as being available in the current Bluebird race lists, although the “Memphis Minnie” Bluebird sides from the October 1935 session were still in the catalog. A Vocalion catalog from September 1934, when Minnie had just started recording for Decca, showed virtually all of her vintage pieces, solo or with Joe, as being still available at the new price of 35 cents or three for $1. Minnie’s Decca records from 1934–1935 were still available in 1944, but Decca had kept virtually its entire 7000 series in print.
In August 1935, she recorded her two tributes to the black national hero, boxing champion Joe Louis: He’s in the Ring (Doing That Same Old Thing) and Joe Louis Strut. Pianist Black Bob (Ed Hudson), with whom Minnie was to have a lengthy working relationship, made his first appearance as Minnie’s accompanist on this session.25 On the last Bluebird session, October 31, 1935, she was accompanied by Casey Bill Weldon for the first time. Casey Bill accompanied her on two sides, When the Sun Goes Down, Part 2,26 and the prostitution song, Hustlin’ Woman Blues, but he dropped out for Selling My Pork Chops and Doctor, Doctor Blues.
While tracking singers through the recording studio provides insight into a major aspect of their lives, even the stars spent only a small part of their working careers in the studio. What was Minnie doing when she wasn’t recording? Like so many blues artists, Minnie traveled considerably, and she frequently returned to the South to play. Like Johnny Littlejohn, Homesick James and countless others, she continually renewed her music at its source. As James himself declared. “Chicago, then back down South, Chicago, then back down there; Mississippi, all the way through. That woman she used to go… . She’d play at those Saturday night fish fries. They would have a big hall, it was just a big room or house, they would take all the beds down, and the kitchen wood stove back there, that’s where they be frying the fish.”27
Sunnyland Slim emphasized how Chicago was just an anchor point for the various travelers who passed through, stayed awhile, but always kept traveling. “Me and her, she’s just like me, when she come here, she didn’t stay, wouldn’t stay. I’ll go back to Cairo, or like other places in the South.”28 Bobo Jenkins remembered seeing Minnie during the mid-thirties playing at a Mr. Towels’s store in Walls, and thirty-five years later, he still remembered Minnie’s beads and fancy clothes.29
Memphis pianist Mose Vinson played with Minnie frequently throughout the thirties and later as well, while Fiddlin’ Joe Martin played with her on 8th Street in West Memphis for Big Lewis, and worked the Jackson jukes with her during the later thirties. Minnie and Martin also worked the Robinsonville area, and he was fond of recalling that he had learned the guitar part for Good Morning, School Girl (also known later as Me and My Chauffeur Blues) from Minnie personally. Martin also remembered that Willie Brown could play the same guitar part. Martin played with Minnie on and off over the years, meeting her early on in Shelby, Mississippi, and ultimately traveling with her to Chicago where he was thrown over, probably in favor of Blind John Davis, with whom Minnie began to record.30
Davis himself preserved a priceless anecdote from those years when he accompanied Minnie. “Minnie paid $200 for a wig. At that time women wasn’t wearing wigs, you know, unless they just had to. She paid $200 for a wig, she got drunk and went home that night, leave that wig on a chair. And somebody done give her a little old puppy. She woke up the next morning looking for her wig, her wig was [scattered] all over the house. Minnie hit [the puppy] with her guitar and broke the neck off of it, and Son Joe let him out, and he said that dog didn’t even look back. That puppy didn’t come back there at all. Oh, god, they had me laughing. I had to get up and go in another room. ‘Cause, man, she was cursing, ‘I’ll kill that so-and-so if I catch him.’ That puppy figured that too.”31
By late 1935 Minnie had settled into a relaxed groove under the supervision of Lester Melrose. Many blues artists were not able to make the transition from rural-sounding downhome blues to the more sophisticated sounds Melrose’s artists turned out, and it is a remarkable sign of Minnie’s resiliency that she adjusted so well,32 becoming a major figure in the blues world of the next two decades, and continuing to have a new record issued every few weeks until the beginning of the war. One critic described Minnie as a “female Big Bill,”33 pointing not only to the crucial role Big Bill and Memphis Minnie played in the consolidation of the Melrose sound, but to the ease with which they tailored their music to the new style. Bill’s remarkable popularity can too easily obscure the fact that stylistically Minnie was as much if not more of an innovator than Bill was.
To appreciate the evolution of Minnie’s style, we must look more closely at the Melrose phenomenon. According to Melrose, it was in early 1934, when taverns were reappearing in the wake of the repeal of prohibition, and when every bar had a jukebox, that he sent a letter to Columbia and Victor saying that he could provide unlimited blues talent to meet their recording needs. Their response was enthusiastic, and “from March, 1934, to February, 1951, I recorded at least 90 percent of all rhythm-and-blues talent for RCA Victor [which included their Bluebird subsidiary] and Columbia Records.”34 Among the majors, only Decca went forward without Melrose’s assistance.
Melrose recruited his artists by traveling throughout the country, from city to city, and from bar to bar, looking for blues singers. He also used bluesmen like Big Bill, Big Joe Williams and Walter Davis as talent scouts to bring him new artists. During Minnie’s heyday of the 1930s and 1940s, Melrose was the single most powerful and most influential man in the blues recording field, and one glance at his “stable” shows why: Big Bill, Washboard Sam, Merline Johnson (Yas Yas Girl), Arthur Crudup, Tampa Red, Lil Green, St. Louis Jimmy, Roosevelt Sykes, Memphis Minnie, Curtis Jones, Big Joe Williams, Walter Davis, Sonny Boy Williamson, Doctor Clayton, Lonnie Johnson, Tommy McClennan, Big Maceo, Bumble Bee Slim, and many others were all Melrose artists. No one has ever accused him of exaggerating when he said “90 percent”.
Melrose’s artists often gathered at Tampa Red’s house at 35th and State, and blues bassist and impresario Willie Dixon first met Melrose there in the mid-1940s. He saw Minnie and Son Joe there, along with Big Maceo, Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee Williamson), Blind John Davis and others who used to “hang out” and practice at Tampa’s. Playing on Melrose sessions with Minnie and Son, as well as with Sonny Boy Williamson, Lil Green and others, influenced his own later work as a producer.35 Muddy Waters remarked that one had to go through Tampa to be welcome at the rehearsal hall, and there was the implication that Tampa Red was also the route to Melrose’s good graces or managership.
Some critics think Melrose “ruined” the blues by imposing, on so many records, a uniform house style, obtained by repeatedly using the same musicians, on their own and on each others’ records. Thus, phrases like “The Bluebird Beat,” the “Melrose Mess” or the “Melrose machine” emphasize the monotonous regularity imposed by the Melrose regime.36 Big Bill was sharply critical of Melrose’s financial dealings too.37 Brewer Phillips’s remarks seem pertinent here. “She always would tell me that she’d been messed around in the music. So I’d say, ‘How can they mess you around?’ She say, ‘They’ll take your money.’ And she’d always say, ‘You can learn to play, but don’t let them take your money.’”38
Other critics, like Delmark Records’s Bob Koester, point to the New Orleans jazz backgrounds of Melrose sidemen and emphasize the positive aspects of Melrose’s productions, like their danceable rhythm and their popularity. Further, unique and unusual artists