Women in Blues: The Forgotten Founders Who Shaped American Music
In August 1920, a vaudeville singer named Mamie Smith walked into a New York recording studio and changed American music forever. Her recording of “Crazy Blues” sold 75,000 copies in its first month alone. Within a year, that number crossed one million. Consequently, record executives who had dismissed Black audiences as uncommercial scrambled to sign every female vocalist they could find. Women in blues did not wait for permission to enter the music industry. Instead, they built it from the ground floor.
What followed was a decade where women dominated the blues entirely. They outsold male artists, filled theaters, and shaped the genre’s earliest commercial identity. However, the story of how that dominance was dismantled — and how later generations fought to reclaim it — remains one of music’s most overlooked chapters. Consequently, this is the full arc — from founding to erasure to reclamation.
The Classic Blues Queens of the 1920s
Mamie Smith and the Door She Kicked Open
Before Mamie Smith’s recording session, no major label believed that Black music could generate commercial returns. Consequently, the “race records” market did not exist. However, Smith’s unexpected success forced the industry to reconsider everything it assumed about American audiences. Okeh Records rushed to record more Black female vocalists. Paramount, Columbia, and Vocalion followed within months.
What made this moment revolutionary was specifically who the labels chose to record first. They did not seek out guitarists from the Mississippi Delta, jug bands, or string ensembles. Instead, they chose women — vaudeville-trained vocalists who could project emotion, fill a room, and sell tickets. For instance, by 1922, at least a dozen Black women had recorded commercially. Meanwhile, male country blues artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson would not see a recording studio until 1926. In other words, women in blues had a six-year head start on the men.
The term “race records” itself deserves context. Record companies coined it to describe music marketed specifically to Black audiences. The category encompassed blues, jazz, gospel, and sermons. Essentially, it represented the first time the American recording industry acknowledged Black consumers as a viable market. Women in blues were the engine that drove those early sales. Consequently, when historians discuss the birth of the modern music industry, these women deserve a central place in the narrative.
Ma Rainey: The Mother of the Blues
Gertrude “Ma” Rainey earned her title through decades of work before anyone pressed wax. Born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1886, she performed across the South for twenty years before she ever entered a studio. In fact, she claimed to have first heard the blues around 1902. A young woman was singing a strange, mournful song in a Missouri tent show. Rainey absorbed the sound immediately. Consequently, she wove it into her vaudeville act and carried it across the South through the Theater Owners Booking Association circuit — the network of Black-owned venues known to performers as “Tough on Black Artists.”
Paramount Records signed her in 1923. Over the next five years, she laid down nearly 100 recordings in Chicago. Her voice was deep, moaning, and unmistakably Southern. Specifically, it carried the weight of field hollers and church hymns alike.
In particular, her phrasing influenced how an entire generation of singers approached the blues. Moreover, her influence extended far beyond her own recordings. Rainey mentored younger performers, including Bessie Smith during their early touring years together. Essentially, she established the template for the touring blues queen: sequined gowns, a necklace of gold coins, commanding stage presence, and audiences packed wall to wall. According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, her recordings represent some of the earliest documented evidence of Southern blues vocal traditions.
Bessie Smith: The Empress Who Saved a Label
Bessie Smith recorded her first side for Columbia Records on February 15, 1923. Pianist Clarence Williams arranged the session. “Downhearted Blues” sold approximately 780,000 copies in six months. In fact, some historians credit those sales with keeping Columbia from bankruptcy. By 1924, her total record sales had surpassed two million copies.
Consequently, she became the highest-paid Black entertainer in America. Furthermore, she became one of the first women in blues to negotiate the terms of her own career. She demanded better pay, chose her own material, and selected every musician who accompanied her. Over her career with Columbia, she recorded more than 160 songs. Consequently, her voice carried an authority that transcended genre boundaries. For instance, Janis Joplin would later call her the greatest blues singer who ever lived. In fact, Columbia’s engineers learned to position their microphones at a distance because Smith’s projection overwhelmed the equipment at close range.
Nevertheless, her commercial dominance ended abruptly. The Great Depression collapsed the race records market and erased many of the gains that women in blues had made. Smith’s recording contract with Columbia ended in 1931. On September 26, 1937, she died from injuries sustained in a car accident on Route 61 in Mississippi at the age of forty-three. Her grave went unmarked for more than thirty years. Accordingly, it took until 1970 for Janis Joplin and a Philadelphia nurse named Juanita Green to split the cost of a headstone.
The Wider Circle
Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were the brightest stars in the classic blues era, but they performed alongside dozens of remarkable women. Lucille Bogan recorded some of the most sexually explicit lyrics of the 1920s and 1930s. Specifically, her recordings pushed boundaries that rock and roll would not approach for another thirty years. Alberta Hunter wrote “Downhearted Blues” before Smith ever recorded it. Hunter went on to a career that spanned seven decades, performing at the White House in the 1970s after a twenty-year retirement.
Similarly, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, and Ethel Waters each contributed distinct voices to the genre. Elizabeth Cotten developed her signature left-handed, upside-down guitar style. Accordingly, her technique influenced generations of folk and blues guitarists who came after her. Likewise, Ida Cox toured with her own revue company and recorded prolifically for Paramount. Nina Simone would later draw from these women’s emotional directness when she fused blues, jazz, and classical music into her own defiant sound.
In total, approximately 100 women recorded blues commercially during the 1920s and early 1930s. This was not a footnote in blues history. Instead, it was the foundation. The classic blues era belonged to women in blues in a way that no subsequent period would match.
Memphis Minnie: The Guitar Player Who Changed the Rules
Outplaying the Men on Their Own Terms
Most classic blues queens sang while male musicians played behind them. Lizzie Douglas — known to the world as Memphis Minnie — shattered that pattern entirely. Born in Algiers, Louisiana, in 1897, she picked up the guitar as a child. However, her style was aggressive, technically precise, and impossible to dismiss. By her teens, she was performing on Beale Street in Memphis. Within a few years, she had earned a reputation that rivaled any male guitarist in the city.
Big Bill Broonzy — one of Chicago’s most celebrated bluesmen — famously said she could play and sing as well as any man he had ever heard. He learned this firsthand during the early 1930s. In a cutting contest at a Chicago nightclub, Minnie defeated Broonzy while the audience chose the winner by applause. The prize was a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of gin. Moreover, she competed against Tampa Red, Sunnyland Slim, and a young Muddy Waters. She held her own against each of them.
A Recording Career Without Equal
Over three decades, Memphis Minnie recorded approximately 200 songs. That output rivals any male blues artist of the same era. Her best-known recordings include “Bumble Bee,” “Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” and “When the Levee Breaks.” Led Zeppelin later adapted that last track for their own catalog. Furthermore, she was among the first blues musicians of any gender to adopt the electric guitar. She made the switch in the late 1930s, well ahead of most of her male contemporaries.
Consequently, her electrified playing anticipated the Chicago blues sound that Muddy Waters and others would popularize a decade later. In fact, several historians have argued that Minnie’s recordings from the early 1940s represent the missing link between acoustic Delta blues and amplified Chicago blues.
Why She Matters to the Larger Story
Minnie proved that women in blues could lead a band, play lead guitar, and command a stage on the same terms as any man in the room. In contrast, the industry would spend the next several decades pretending that was impossible. Her career is a reminder that the barriers these artists faced were never about talent or ability. Instead, they were about who controlled the recording contracts, the club bookings, and the narrative.
The Erasure: When Blues Went Electric
The Shift to the Urban North
During the 1940s, the blues moved north with the Great Migration. Southern musicians carried Delta blues traditions to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Memphis. In these industrial cities, the music plugged in and got louder. Muddy Waters electrified the Delta sound at Chess Records. Similarly, Howlin’ Wolf brought raw, overwhelming power to the amplified stage. Elmore James made the slide guitar scream through overdriven amplifiers. Essentially, the labels built their rosters almost entirely around men.
This shift was not accidental. The electrified Chicago sound was marketed as hard, tough, and masculine. Audiences that found swagger and sexual bravado exciting in Black men often found those same qualities unsettling when expressed by women. As a result, the roughly 100 women who had dominated blues recording in the 1920s found themselves locked out of the genre they had built. In other words, the doors that Mamie Smith had kicked open were being closed from the inside.
How the Numbers Collapsed
Consider the contrast. Consider the classic blues era: approximately 100 women recorded commercially. In fact, female artists outsold their male counterparts by significant margins. By the 1950s, however, Koko Taylor was described as one of the few prominent female singers in Chicago blues. That phrase alone reveals how far the exclusion had gone in just three decades. Meanwhile, the men who recorded for Chess, Cobra, and Vee-Jay rarely shared a stage with female artists, let alone a billing. Essentially, the electric blues era wrote women out of the genre’s story.
The “Girl Singer” Stereotype
What remained for women in blues during the 1940s and 1950s was a single, diminished role: the girl singer. In this framework, a woman could front a band but never lead one. A vocalist could record, but the label chose her material. Performing was allowed, but the spotlight belonged to the guitarist. This stereotype persisted for decades.
Consequently, it shaped how audiences, critics, and label executives treated every female artist who followed. Essentially, the assumption was that women belonged at the microphone — never behind the guitar, never running the session, never choosing the setlist. It took performers with extraordinary force of personality to break through the walls that the industry had built around them. In particular, it took women who refused to accept the role the business had assigned them.
Breaking Through the Silence
Big Mama Thornton and the Songs That Were Stolen
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton stood five-foot-nine, weighed over 300 pounds, and sang with a ferocity that no studio microphone could fully contain. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1926, she left home as a teenager to join Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue. By the early 1950s, she had settled in Houston. There, she recorded for Peacock Records. In addition, she built a formidable reputation on the chitlin’ circuit through relentless touring.
By 1952, she had become a commanding live performer. That year, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote “Hound Dog” specifically for her voice. Thornton’s version hit number one on the R&B chart in 1953, where it stayed for seven weeks. However, she earned just $500 in total. Four years later, Elvis Presley recorded the same song and sold over ten million copies. Nevertheless, Thornton never received a meaningful royalty check from the original recording. For example, Presley’s version generated millions in publishing revenue. However, none of that money reached the woman who had made the song famous.
Furthermore, Thornton wrote “Ball and Chain” in 1961. Her label at the time chose not to release the recording but retained the copyright nonetheless. When Janis Joplin covered the song at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and turned it into a rock anthem, Joplin — to her credit — ensured Thornton received songwriter credit and royalties. Accordingly, not every woman in blues was treated fairly, but some allies fought to correct the record. Thornton’s story, however, remains one of the clearest examples of how the industry profited from Black women’s creativity while denying them the compensation they earned. Her experience became a reference point for every subsequent conversation about artist rights and fair treatment in the recording business.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother Rock Forgot
Sister Rosetta Tharpe fused gospel, blues, and heavy electric guitar distortion into a sound that predated rock and roll by a full decade. Born Rosetta Nubin in Arkansas in 1915, she made her stage debut at the age of four and recorded her first sides for Decca Records in 1938. Her guitar playing was aggressive, rhythmically driving, and completely unlike anything else on the market.
In 1944, she recorded “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” which became the first gospel song to chart on Billboard’s R&B listings. It peaked at number two in 1945. Many historians consider it a strong candidate for the first rock and roll record ever made. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley all cited her as a direct influence on their own work. Nevertheless, the rock establishment ignored her contribution for decades.
Tharpe died in 1973 without any major institutional recognition. It took until 2018 — forty-five years after her death — for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct her as an Early Influence. Singer Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes delivered the induction speech. The delay speaks volumes about how the music industry has treated the women in blues who built it. Furthermore, it raises a question that applies to every artist in this story: how many others have been forgotten simply because the institutions that hand out recognition were not looking in their direction?
Ruth Brown: Fighting for What Was Owed
Ruth Brown’s string of hits in the 1950s was so commercially important to Atlantic Records that the label earned the nickname “The House That Ruth Built.” Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1928, she scored her first number-one R&B hit with “Teardrops from My Eyes” in 1950. “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean” followed in 1953. In spite of this extraordinary commercial success, Brown received almost nothing in royalties from Atlantic. For instance, many of her hit records generated substantial revenue for the label while she struggled financially.
After years of fighting for proper compensation, her advocacy helped establish the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1988. The organization worked to secure back royalties and financial assistance for artists across the industry who had been similarly exploited. Brown’s battle was not just personal — it was structural. Consequently, it benefited generations of musicians who came after her, regardless of gender.
The Second Wave of Power
Etta James: A Voice That Refused Limits
Etta James signed with Chess Records’ Argo subsidiary in the late 1950s. In 1960, she released “At Last.” That recording became one of the most enduring songs in American music. For instance, it has been featured in films, television shows, and wedding receptions for over six decades. However, the song’s ubiquity nearly obscures the full range of James’s career. She moved between blues, R&B, jazz, soul, and rock with a voice that could shift from a whisper to a roar within a single phrase.
Over her career, she won three Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted her in 1993. Specifically, what set James apart from her contemporaries was her refusal to stay in one lane. She recorded for Chess Records into 1975, constantly reinventing her approach. Nevertheless, she stayed rooted in the emotional directness of the blues throughout every stylistic shift. Her range demonstrated that women in blues did not need to be confined to a single sound to maintain authenticity. Moreover, her willingness to record everything from deep blues to rock ballads expanded the commercial possibilities for every female artist who followed.
Koko Taylor: The Queen Who Earned Her Crown
Cora Ann Walton moved from Memphis to Chicago in the 1950s with $35 and a voice that could shake the walls of any club on the South Side. Willie Dixon discovered her singing in a neighborhood tavern. Consequently, he brought her to Chess Records shortly afterward. In 1966, she recorded Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle.” Howlin’ Wolf had originally cut the song five years earlier. Taylor’s version peaked at number four on the R&B chart. It became her signature song for the rest of her career. In 2023, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.
Over five decades of touring and recording, Taylor won 29 Blues Music Awards. Accordingly, no other artist in the foundation’s history has matched that number. She earned the title “Queen of the Blues” not through coronation but through relentless work. In fact, her final performance took place at the Blues Music Awards ceremony on May 7, 2009. There, she accepted her twenty-ninth award. Taylor died less than a month later. Today, the Blues Foundation names its Traditional Blues Female award in her honor — a lasting recognition that she defined the standard for women in blues performance.
Bonnie Raitt and the Road to Reclamation
Learning Directly From the Source
Bonnie Raitt did not come to the blues through records alone. In the early 1970s, she sought out the artists themselves. She toured with Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sippie Wallace, and Son House. Moreover, she learned slide guitar directly from the tradition’s practitioners. Essentially, she absorbed technique, tone, and feel from musicians who had lived the music for decades.
This approach shaped everything about her playing and singing. Her slide work carries the weight of the Delta tradition while remaining distinctly her own. Likewise, her vocal style draws from the emotional directness of the classic blues queens without imitating them. In addition, Raitt co-founded Musicians United for Safe Energy in 1979. She has advocated throughout her career for anti-nuclear, environmental, and social justice causes. Rolling Stone named her among its greatest guitarists and greatest singers — a recognition that few women in blues have received from the mainstream rock press.
The Comeback That Changed the Conversation
Warner Bros. dropped Raitt from their roster in the mid-1980s after a string of commercially disappointing albums. Her 1989 release “Nick of Time” was supposed to be a modest comeback on Capitol Records. Instead, it reached number one on the Billboard 200. At the 32nd Grammy Awards in 1990, Raitt swept four categories. She won Album of the Year, beating Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Don Henley in the process.
That success mattered beyond Raitt’s own career. It proved that women in blues could sell records at a mainstream level. In fact, the industry had denied that possibility since the collapse of the classic blues era seven decades earlier. Raitt went on to win thirteen Grammy Awards over her career. More importantly, she used her platform to advocate for the artists who had taught her. Her activism contributed directly to the push for royalty reform and fair compensation that Ruth Brown had started years earlier.
An Activist With a Guitar
Raitt’s impact extends beyond music. Consequently, she has become one of the genre’s most effective advocates. Her concerts have raised funds for environmental causes, Native American rights, and anti-nuclear campaigns. She performed at the historic 1979 No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden. In 2018, the Folk Alliance International honored her with the People’s Voice Award for a lifetime of activism. For Raitt, the blues has always been inseparable from justice — a conviction she shares with the classic era women who first sang about inequality, desire, and freedom.
The Modern Torchbearers
A New Generation Refuses the Old Labels
The women carrying blues forward today owe debts to every artist in this story. However, they are not simply preserving a museum piece. Instead, they are expanding the genre’s boundaries while honoring its roots.
Samantha Fish has emerged as one of the most visible blues artists of her generation. Based in New Orleans, she plays cigar box slide guitar, fronts her own band, and moves between blues, rock, and roots music with confidence. Her albums “Kill or Be Kind” and “Faster” earned Grammy nominations for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Accordingly, those nominations confirm that audiences still want women in blues who play with conviction and fire. She also founded the Cigar Box Guitar Festival, further cementing her role as both performer and advocate for the tradition.
Shemekia Copeland and the Weight of Legacy
Shemekia Copeland carries a particular weight. Her father, Johnny Copeland, was a Texas blues legend who died in 1997. She grew up inside the tradition, debuted professionally at the age of eight, and released her first album at twenty-one. Twelve albums and nine Blues Music Awards later, Copeland has earned her place entirely on her own terms as one of the leading women in blues of the 21st century. In addition, her 2024 Grammy nominations — including Best Contemporary Blues Album for her record with Jontavious Willis — signal that the industry is finally recognizing what blues audiences have known for years.
The Expanding Circle
Susan Tedeschi and the Tedeschi Trucks Band have brought blues-inflected rock to arena stages worldwide. Tedeschi’s vocals carry the kind of emotional weight that recalls the classic queens. Meanwhile, the band’s interplay with guitarist Derek Trucks creates a sound rooted in the Allman Brothers tradition. Beth Hart, with seventeen albums to her name, has built a loyal following across Europe and North America. In particular, her gritty vocals and unflinching approach to songwriting have earned critical praise and a devoted touring audience.
Joanne Shaw Taylor, a British guitarist who first gained attention when Dave Stewart invited her onstage at sixteen, carries the British blues tradition forward with slide work and fingerpicking prowess. Similarly, Ally Venable, still in her twenties and based in Texas, represents the youngest wave of women staking their claim on the genre. Consequently, her debut albums have drawn comparisons to Stevie Ray Vaughan for their raw energy and technical command.
Together, these artists form something the blues has not seen since the 1920s: a critical mass of women in blues who lead their own bands, write their own material, play their own instruments, and refuse the “girl singer” label. The circle is expanding steadily. This time, no one is getting written out.
What Women in Blues Changed Forever
The contribution of these artists cannot be measured in record sales alone, though those numbers are staggering. Women created the commercial blues recording industry when Mamie Smith proved that Black music could sell. Moreover, they established the blues as a vehicle for personal expression — desire, heartbreak, rage, independence — at a time when Black women had virtually no other public platforms for those emotions.
Furthermore, they fought for the structural reforms that benefit every working musician today. Ruth Brown’s royalty battles led directly to the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. Bonnie Raitt’s activism pushed the industry toward fairer compensation practices. Big Mama Thornton’s exploitation became a cautionary tale that changed how songwriting credits and publishing rights were handled. Consequently, every musician who receives a fair royalty check today benefits from the battles these women waged.
The impact also extends beyond the blues itself. Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s electric guitar work laid the groundwork for rock and roll. Bessie Smith’s emotional delivery influenced jazz and soul for generations. Memphis Minnie’s electric playing anticipated an entire movement before it had a name. In other words, the women in blues did not just shape one genre. They shaped the course of American popular music.
The history of blues music is incomplete without these women. They belong at the center of the story, not in a sidebar and not in a special category. Without them, there is no foundation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the first woman to record the blues commercially?
Mamie Smith recorded “Crazy Blues” for Okeh Records on August 10, 1920. It became the first commercially successful blues recording by a Black artist, selling over one million copies within a year. Consequently, her success opened the door for every blues artist — male and female — who recorded in the decade that followed.
Why did women disappear from blues in the 1940s and 1950s?
When blues shifted from acoustic to electric in the 1940s, the genre’s image changed with it as a result. Labels like Chess Records built their rosters primarily around male artists. Audiences that celebrated swagger in men often rejected the same qualities in women. Consequently, the roughly 100 women who had recorded commercially in the 1920s were reduced to a handful by the 1950s. Furthermore, the “girl singer” stereotype limited whatever roles remained available to female artists.
Did Memphis Minnie really beat Big Bill Broonzy in a guitar contest?
According to Broonzy’s own account, Memphis Minnie defeated him in a cutting contest at a Chicago nightclub in the early 1930s. The audience chose the winner by applause. Historians Paul and Beth Garon note that Broonzy may have combined details from multiple contests in his retelling. Nevertheless, the core fact is well documented. Minnie was respected as a guitarist on equal terms with the top men in Chicago blues.
How many Grammy Awards has Bonnie Raitt won?
Bonnie Raitt has won thirteen Grammy Awards over her career, including Album of the Year for “Nick of Time” in 1990 and a Lifetime Achievement Award. Her 1990 sweep — four Grammys in a single night — proved that women in blues could achieve mainstream commercial and critical success at the highest level.
Who are the leading women in blues today?
The current generation includes Samantha Fish, Shemekia Copeland, Susan Tedeschi, Beth Hart, Joanne Shaw Taylor, and Ally Venable, among others. These artists lead their own bands, write their own material, and have earned Grammy nominations and Blues Music Awards. Together, they represent the broadest wave of female blues talent since the classic era of the 1920s. Furthermore, many of these artists are crossing genre boundaries in ways that recall the versatility of Etta James and the boundary-pushing spirit of Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The tradition continues to grow because these women refuse to let it shrink. Consequently, the future of the blues looks more like its founding era than any period in between — driven by women who write, play, and lead on their own terms.
