In evaluating Melrose’s role in the changes that seemed to sweep through the blues recording world in the New Deal years, two rarely considered perspectives should be emphasized. The reputedly monotonous combo sound of the 1930s may be less a Melrosian artifact than the result of a change in styles already in effect by the late 1920s. The sound was solidified with the rise of the piano, inaugurated by Leroy Carr, who, with Scrapper Blackwell, recorded the instant hit How Long—How Long Blues on June 19, 1928.40 Peetie Wheatstraw began recording in 1930, and his post-1933 records were influential in consolidating the sound that had begun with Carr and Blackwell, well before the Melrose empire was in place. Blues record impresario Nick Perls was only half joking when he commented, “Peetie Wheatstraw ruined the blues almost single-handedly,” for Wheatstraw’s smooth style of the 1930s seemed to typify the forces that spelled doom for so many rural-sounding, country blues artists.41
One should also assess the role of the Melrose musicians from a post–World War II perspective, i.e. from the other end of their period of dominance, to see the vitally important role played by the expressive harp and vocal style of Melrose headliner Sonny Boy Williamson in providing inspiration for the new electric Chicago sound of Little Walter, Snooky Pryor and other newcomers. Sonny Boy had begun recording in 1937, and his records were among the most popular of any blues artist ever.
From these alternating perspectives, Melrose becomes a sign of regularity caught in the midst of two innovations: Carr, Wheatstraw and the rise of the piano, and Sonny Boy, Little Walter and the rise of the harp. Melrose had little personally to do with Carr or Little Walter, but his presence during the critical period of 1934–1951 was strongly felt. At the very least, Melrose’s refractive powers affected the music that passed from Carr to Little Walter, but all concerned would agree that his regime was more than simply catalytic.42 And if we query the evidence and not the critics we find that these extremely popular and danceable records are “monotonous” only for those commentators who so ardently and exclusively crave vintage Delta blues or the piercing electric guitars and harps of the 1950s.
Minnie’s last intricately picked guitar duet was recorded in 1932, and the presence of a piano on her January 10, 1935, Decca session was the strongest sign of what the future held. Henceforth, Minnie’s guitar began to play a more supporting role, and even on the two-guitar sessions that lacked a piano, Minnie seldom brought an elaborate picking technique to the recording studio. If a piano wasn’t on a session, it might as well have been. This was a music styled for the tough joints on Chicago’s South Side, and not for the country suppers and fish fries Minnie played for in the South.
But did her city guitar style evolve out of the notion that her more dexterous rural style was old-fashioned and dated, or was it merely the socioeconomic requirements of tavern music? Were her more frequent spoken asides in the later records a way of covering over silences emanating from the gaps in her new style of playing, or did she think she was being urbane and cosmopolitan? While some of her mid- to late-1930s Vocalions might suggest she was a typical Melrose musician, her vocals nonetheless injected a rougher, grittier and more vital feel into many of her songs, and the absence of a piano on her sessions between 1938 and 1947 kept her output from being overly smooth and monotonous. Yet this is only half the story, the part that can be told from Minnie’s childhood through early 1934.
From a modern perspective, i.e. viewed from Chicago instead of from the South, Minnie’s seizure of modern guitar styles was as much innovation as it was adaptation. While other blues artists also sought techniques that would bring their performances up to date, Minnie immediately grasped the lyric quality of the single-string picking that had been pioneered by Lonnie Johnson a decade earlier.43 This same style would eventually emerge victorious in the hands of T-Bone Walker and B. B. King, after passing through the hands of electric guitar pioneers George Barnes and Willie Lacey, in the thirties and forties respectively, and even Django Reinhardt could be said to have blossomed from the same tree. Yet Minnie was one of the first blues artists to use the electric guitar.44
She frequently played at the 708 Club with Big Bill, and she played at the Tramor Hotel and Cafe at 740 E. 47th Street accompanied by Black Bob on piano and Arnett Nelson on clarinet.45 Broonzy wrote that he and Minnie had “played in night clubs all over the States together,”46 and Minnie and Black Bob traveled together as well, probably in the mid-1930s.47 Moody Jones talked about what a perfectionist Black Bob was and how he was likely to stop the band right in the middle of a number, even in front of a big crowd, to say, “You didn’t do that right.”48 Much like Minnie, as we shall see. Often when she returned from her travels, she had no home to come back to, and on those occasions she stayed with friends and colleagues like Sunnyland Slim and his wife, Bessie. Sunnyland recalled, “When Memphis Minnie come here … she stayed with Tampa like one night sometimes, or she’d stay with me and Bessie. And then she moved to Milton [Rector’s] daddy’s.49 And she stayed there for a little and she got that job at the 708 Club. Well, me and Sykes had been playing there, and I got her that job at that 708 Club. She stayed there. And then I got her another job out in Argo [a Chicago suburb].”50
Minnie had had seven recording sessions in 1935, for three different recording companies. On her first session of 1936, she cut four lyrically interesting songs, one of which was I’m a Gambling Woman. “Yeaaah, Minnie shot craps like a man,” said Homesick James, “playing those cards, man, raising all kind of hell, heh, heh. All of them women who’d sing the blues, would curse, be drunk, just sit up and talk a lot of shit, man. What foul language.”51 Johnny Shines confirmed Homesick’s observation, “Yeah, Minnie gambled like a dog.”52
Minnie’s sidemen are not always easy to identify, especially during this period of her career, where the personnel suggested by Dixon and Godrich can’t easily be confirmed. A number of authorities have challenged the notion that Blind John Davis plays piano on these sessions, and it does seem more likely that the pianist is Black Bob for several sessions that previously were thought to include Davis.53
Sometimes even a mistake will help to verify the personnel on a recording session. Alfred Bell’s trumpet flubs suggest his presence on the November 12, 1936, session as well as the June 9, 1937 session, although Dixon and Godrich note his presence on the second session only.54 Whether trumpets were never more than Melrose “experiments” in the first place,55 or whether a too-close listen to Bell’s sour notes ultimately soured Melrose on brass, we’ll never know, but Minnie was never to record again with trumpets or even saxes.
She did, however, record an entire session on June 23, 1938, accompanied by Charlie McCoy on mandolin, while in the preceding session, many sides of which exist only as test pressings, Arnett Nelson again accompanies her on clarinet. She herself may have taken up the mandolin again for several sides. Close listening is required to hear the mandolin on many of these—and often it cannot be said with any certainty that a mandolin is present—but it can be clearly heard on take two of Running and Dodging Blues.56
The most important event of this period was the beginning of her assocation with Ernest Lawlars, otherwise known as “Little Son Joe,” soon to be her second husband. Son Joe was a talented guitarist, and he and Minnie were very close. Minnie even gave up one of her later show tours because she couldn’t be accompanied by Son Joe. “She never did do anything that her husband couldn’t follow her about… . She was very faithful to him, you know she never did get carried away, ‘bout her husbands,” said Brewer Phillips.57
“Lawlars” is the correct spelling of Ernest and Minnie’s last name, but misspellings, of the type of which they were certainly aware, continued to plague them even beyond their deaths. Ernest’s death certificate cites his wife’s name as “Winnie,” and on Minnie’s death certificate, her last name is given as “Lawlers.” While the Arkansas Department of Health, Division of Vital Records, has no record of Ernest Lawlars’s birth, the death certificate shows Hughes, Arkansas,