The News Review:
- TUNES WITH AN ATTITUDE: These ?uppity’ women add some spunk to…
- The life and death of Bessie Smith 70 years later
- San Jose Mercury News Calif. Shay Quillen column: Also at the…
TUNES WITH AN ATTITUDE: These ?uppity’ women add some spunk to…
Free with registration – Times-News – AccessMyLibrary.com – Sep 27, 2007
–>CPYRIGHT 2007 Times-News Byline: Brian Rose Sep. 27–THMASVILLE — They’re known as Saffire — The Uppity Blues Women but according to the Chicago Tribune “these three middle-aged women look more like fugitives from a Tupperware party than a typical blues band. ” Looks can be deceiving though because Saffire has been a force on the blues music scene for nearly 20 years. The band has shared the stage with the likes of B. King Ray Charles and Willie Dixon. “We used to perform nonstop when we were younger but that’s dwindled as we’ve become aging parents and aging musicians” Andra Faye a mandolin player and vocalist with the band said.
The life and death of Bessie Smith 70 years later
PopMatters – Sep 27, 2007
She was a uniquely talented defiantly independent artist whose life story was as sensational as her death. Bessie Smith along with a handful of other black female artists (including Ma Rainey Mamie Smith Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters) sprouted the roots of blues and grew it into one of the most popular musical forms of the 1920s and 1930s. Smith’s keen sense of style rhythm and intonation along with the resonance and power of her voice captured the essence of blues music as well as the pain and strength of generations of black female experience. Her career began in the early 1900s on the streets of Chattanooga Tenn. where she and her older brother Clarence performed as a duo. In 1912 she was hired as a dancer for a small performance troupe that featured “The Mother of the Blues” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. For the next several years Smith toured in the South and Northeast while developing her theatrical skills and stage presence under Rainey’s wing.
San Jose Mercury News Calif. Shay Quillen column: Also at the…
Free with registration – San Jose Mercury News – AccessMyLibrary.com – Sep 27, 2007
–>CPYRIGHT 2007 San Jose Mercury News Byline: Shay Quillen Sep. 27–Tom Mazzolini has turned 65 but he says he has no plans to retire from putting on the San Francisco Blues Festival the annual gathering he founded in 1973. “A blues guitar player doesn’t retire he just keeps going until he can’t do it anymore” says Mazzolini also a respected music journalist and longtime DJ at Berkeley’s KPFA-FM (94. I’m just going to keep doing it until I can’t do it I guess. ” For the 35th installment to be held Saturday and Sunday at the Great Meadow at Fort Mason Mazzolini has put together an event that respects the music’s past while keeping one ear open to the latest twists on the tradition.