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African American women were among the pioneers of our American record industry. Mamie Smith sold over 1 million copies of her record “Crazy Blues” in 1920. In 1924, Ma Rainey set out on her career, during which she recorded over 100 sides. These influential women blew open a huge market that no one knew was there, but these women of the blues and their successors were systematically disenfranchised. They were pushed aside, and it has been a struggle ever since.

Nonetheless, ladies sing the blues as they always have — more often than not staying at home, not hitting the road, performing their music in the church or at house parties, keeping the social fabric of their communities tied together with song. Still, women have always been at the heart of the blues. Most every bluesman I have worked with had mothers who played music, who got them going on the guitar, the piano, and singing at home.

Men continue to be the predominant force in blues recordings and live performance. But here at Music Maker, we have always kept a watchful eye for women musicians, and have recorded and toured many such powerful women. This compilation represents that work.

I met Leyla McCalla performing Bach Suites on her cello on Royal Street in New Orleans. I soon introduced her to the successful black string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and she joined the group. We helped her produce her debut solo record, “Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes,” which has recently been picked up and reissued by Smithsonian Folkways.
I met Beverly Guitar Watkins playing in Underground Atlanta — the old viaducts underneath the heart of downtown Atlanta — and we launched her recording career with a brilliant album produced by Mike Vernon, plus a 42-city tour with Taj Mahal. I met Rhiannon Giddens in a North Carolina pasture, playing under a tent, and managed her career for nine years. She continues to grow and expand her musical horizons.

This album contains performances by so many special ladies:
• Cora Mae Bryant, the daughter of Atlanta blues legend and recording artist Curley Weaver
• Willa Mae Buckner, who ran away from home at 12 to join an African American carnival where she learned to sing and dance in the chorus line
• Precious Bryant, from deep rural Georgia, who grew up in a musical family
• Sweet Betty from Atlanta, just a wonderful blues singer
• Pura Fé, an indigenous artist and activist who writes and sings anthems for her Tuscaroran Nation throughout the world
• And finally, Essie Mae Brooks, Marie Manning, and Cora Fluker represent the heart of it all — where all the music came from — Black spirituals from the Deep South.


Welcome to the Music Maker musical universe,
Tim Duffy