SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2021
VOLUME TEN NUMBER THREE
NANCY WILSON
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
NANCY WILSON DONALD HARRISON
(October 2-8)
CHICO FREEMAN
(October 9-15)
BEN WILLIAMS
(October 16-22)
MISSY ELLIOTT
(October 23-29)
SHEMEKIA COPELAND
(October 30-November 5)
VON FREEMAN
(November 6-12)
DAVID BAKER
(November 13-19)
RUTHIE FOSTER
(November 20-26)
VICTORIA SPIVEY
(November 27-December 3)
ANTONIO HART
(December 4-10)
GEORGE ‘HARMONICA’ SMITH
(December 11-17)
JAMISON ROSS
(December 18-24)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/victoria-spivey-mn0000218944/biography
Victoria Spivey
(1906-1976)
Artist Biography by Richard Skelly
Victoria Spivey was one of the more influential blues women simply because she was around long enough to influence legions of younger women and men who rediscovered blues music during the mid-'60s U.S. blues revival, which had been brought about by British blues bands as well as their American counterparts, like Paul Butterfield and Elvin Bishop. Spivey could do it all: she wrote songs, sang them well, and accompanied herself on piano and organ, and occasionally ukulele.
Spivey began her recording career at age 19 and came from the same rough-and-tumble clubs in Houston and Dallas that produced Sippie Wallace. In 1918, she left home to work as a pianist at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. In the early '20s, she played in gambling parlors, gay hangouts, and brothels in Galveston and Houston with Blind Lemon Jefferson. Among Spivey's many influences was Ida Cox, herself a sassy blues woman, and taking her cue from Cox, Spivey wrote and recorded tunes like "TB Blues," "Dope Head Blues," and "Organ Grinder Blues." Spivey's other influences included Bobby "Blue" Bland, Sara Martin, and Bessie Smith. Like so many other women blues singers who had their heyday in the '20s and '30s, Spivey wasn't afraid to sing sexually suggestive lyrics, and this turned out to be a blessing nearly 40 years later given the sexual revolution of the '60s and early '70s.
She recorded her first song, "Black Snake Blues," for the OKeh label in 1926, and then worked as a songwriter at a music publishing company in St. Louis in the late '20s. In the '30s, Spivey recorded for the Victor, Vocalion, Decca, and OKeh labels, and moved to New York City, working as a featured performer in a number of African-American musical revues, including the Hellzapoppin' Revue. In the '30s, she recorded and spent time on the road with Louis Armstrong's various bands. By the '50s, Spivey had left show business and sang only in church. But in forming her own Spivey Records label in 1962, she found new life in her old career. Her first release on her own label featured Bob Dylan as an accompanist.
As the folk revival began to take hold in the early '60s, Spivey found herself an in-demand performer on the folk-blues festival circuit. She also performed frequently in nightclubs around New York City. Unlike others from her generation, Spivey continued her recording career until well into the '70s, performing at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1973 with Roosevelt Sykes. Throughout the '60s and '70s, she had an influence on musicians as varied as Dylan, Sparky Rucker, Ralph Rush, Carrie Smith, Edith Johnson, and Bonnie Raitt.
Spivey's many albums for Spivey and other labels include the excellent Songs We Taught Your Mother (1962), which also includes contributions from Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin, Idle Hours (1961), The Queen and Her Knights (1965), and The Victoria Spivey Recorded Legacy of the Blues (1970). In 1970, Spivey was awarded a BMI Commendation of Excellence from the music publishing organization for her long and outstanding contributions to many worlds of music. After entering Beekman Downtown Hospital with an internal hemorrhage, she died a short while later in 1976. Victoria Spivey is buried in Hempstead, New York.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/victoria-spivey
Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey was one of the few female blues vocalists of the 1920s to continue her career well beyond the classic blues era. In addition to being a stage performer and recording artist, Spivey was also a witty songwriter and shrewd businesswoman. Her keen grasp of the business end of he blues enabled her to keep touring and making records long after nearly all the other classic blues singers of the 1920s had faded from the scene.
As a blues singer, Spivey did not compare with the towering talent of Bessie Smith or Ida Cox; Spivey's voice might have lacked refinement and range, but her moaning wais and country blues phrasing not only reflected her Texas roots but also made her blues believable. Spivey wrote some of the more penetratingly direct blues songs of the classic blues era. ''T-B Blues'' deal with the rejection that tuberculosis victims faced in the 20's. ''Dope Head Blues'' might well have been the first blues song recorded about the dangers of cocaine, while ''Organ Grinder Blues'' dripped with eroticism.
Spivey began her career by singing and playing piano in Houston saloons and whorehouses. She recorded her first song, ''Black Snake Blues,'' in 1926 for the Okeh label. Based out of Missouri in the late '20s, Spivey worked as a songwriter for the St. Louis Music Company and appeared in the all-black movie musical Hallelujah! In the 1930s she recorded for Victor, Vocalion, Decca, and Okeh and appeared as a featured performer in a number of musical shows, including the acclaimed Hellzapoppin' Revue. Spivey worked countless one-night stands, mostly in New York City, often working with dancer Billy Adams.
In the 1950s, Spivey left show business, singing only in the church. But she came back to the blues in 1962 when she formed her own record company, Spivey Records, and resumed performing. Her timing was such that she was able to capitalize on the growing interest in blues and folk music. Spivey played major blues and folk festivals in the U.S. and Europe and recorded old-time classic blues singers like Alberta Hunter on her label. Spivey continued to perform until her death in 1976.
https://www.allaboutbluesmusic.com/victoria-spivey/
VICTORIA SPIVEY
Victoria Spivey was one of the Blues Divas who dominated the market for ‘Race Music‘
in the 20’s, but her talents as a businesswoman, songwriter and
performer kept her in the business all her life. Born in Houston in
1906, Victoria Regina Spivey was brought up surrounded by music, as her
father had a successful string band. She left home at the age of 12 to
play piano at the Lincoln Theatre in Dallas, and over the next few years
made a living playing in the cat-houses and gambling dens of the major
Texas cities. During this time she met and accompanied many passing
Blues legends including Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Victoria’s first recording was a hit:
‘Black Snake Blues’ was Victoria’s first recording for Okeh in 1926, and her songs ‘TB Blues’, ‘Dope Head Blues’ and the suggestive ‘Organ Grinder’ made her almost as famous as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Victoria moved to St. Louis to work as a songwriter for a music publisher and continue her recording career. She was very adept at keeping up with the times, moving through various styles by using her own piano with a simple guitar backing, or small jazz groups which included King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, and occasionally using a full swing band. Her material ranged from her spicy ‘hokum’ style to the good-time jazz that was the pop music of the day. Victoria also had two singing sisters, Addie and Elton, who both used stage names; Addie was known as ‘Sweet Peas’ and Elton as ‘ZaZu Girl’. Both ‘Jane Lucas’ and ‘Hannah May’ were Spivey girls, but no-one definitely knows which was who! Victoria and both her sisters appear on her 1936 song ‘ I Can’t Last Long’.
Victoria on British TV in 1963;
In the late 30’s Victoria moved to New York to pursue a career in stage musicals, including a feature spot in the ‘Hellsapoppin’ Revue’ alongside her husband, the dancer Billy Adams. She toured with Louis Armstrong and her stage work kept her busy during the War years and beyond, still playing in vaudeville and revues well into the 50’s. For a while Victoria sang only in Church, but the Folk/Blues revival gave her the chance of a comeback. She cut an album in 1961, ‘Woman Blues!’ with Lonnie Johnson, who she had last worked with in 1929, and the following year she set up Spivey Records. As well as promoting new Blues talent,she used this as a showcase for her own work and several albums were issued, mixing her well known classics with new material. She played with many of her old friends, like Hannah Sylvester, Sippie Wallace and Lucille Hegamin as well as more famous Blues players like Memphis Slim, Sunnyland Slim, and Johnny Shines, and recorded younger talents like John Hammond Jr. and Sugar Blue. Even a young Bob Dylan shows up playing harmonica!
Victoria was in great demand as a live performer on the Folk/Blues circuit, touring Europe as well as the States and she loved the night-club scene in New York. She appeared at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1973 and a live album of that show, ‘Grind It!’ sees Victoria fronting the electric Brooklyn Blues Busters along with her long time friend, pianist Roosevelt Sykes.
Victoria Spivey was one of the few Blues Divas of the classic era to make it from the barrel-house to the three-day Festival, adapting to many musical styles along the way. Her powerful songs written from a woman’s point of view that had seemed so bold in the 20’s, found a new resonance in the sexually liberated and Feminist 70’s. Time finally caught up with her in 1976, when she passed away in a New York hospital.
https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/victoria-spivey
Victoria Spivey
Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, The Faber Companion to 20th-Century Popular Music, 2001
b. 15 October 1906, Houston, Texas, USA, d. 3 October 1976, New York
HER RASPING VOICE and narrow range lacked the grandeur of Bessie Smith or the grace of Ethel Waters, but Victoria Spivey made a number of idiosyncratic and affecting records in the '20s and '30s, seldom leaving the direct path of the blues, and often accompanied by the finest of contemporary jazzmen.
She learned to play piano as a child and in her teens worked in local clubs and theatres. Moving to St Louis in 1926 she recorded, with her own piano accompaniment, 'Black Snake Blues' (OKeh). Its success earned her further recording dates with OKeh (1926–9), Victor (1929–30) and other labels. She composed most of her material, favouring as subjects reptiles, crime and tuberculosis, on which she wrote a famous 'T. B. Blues' (OKeh, 1927).
Often accompanied on guitar by Lonnie Johnson, she recorded with him the suggestive duet 'Toothache Blues' (OKeh, 1928). She also recorded in 1929 with Louis Armstrong on OKeh and trumpeter Henry "Red" Allen's New York Orchestra (more or less the Luis Russell Band) on Victor, cutting 'Funny Feathers' with both, and with Allen the superb 'Moaning the Blues' session.
Meanwhile Spivey had been appearing in revue and in King Vidor's all-black movie Hallelujah! (1929). She continued to work both in vaudeville and as a blues recording artist throughout the thirties, ending the decade in the New York and travelling productions of the musical revue Hellzapoppin'. From the late '40s she was based in New York, playing jazz venues and hotel lounges.
Reunited in 1961 with Johnson, Spivey played club dates and recorded two albums for Prestige-Bluesville; for the same label she also brought out of retirement her contemporaries Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin for the album Songs We Taught Your Mother. The following year she started the Spivey label to issue her own new recordings, made with jazz friends like tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate, as well as a reissue collection, and new product by old friends like Johnson and singer/pianist Roosevelt Sykes (including The Queen and Her Knights, 1963).
She also encouraged young musicians, both black and white, among them Bob Dylan, who played harmonica on a session by Big Joe Williams. In 1963 she toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and for the next dozen years appeared at similar events all over the US, an enthusiastic, if sometimes eccentric, promoter of the blues.
Two sisters, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey and Elton Spivey, "The Za Zu Girl", had less distinguished touring and recording careers.
© Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, 2001
Total word count of piece: 441
Citation
Laing, D., & Hardy, P. (2001) "Victoria Spivey". Book Excerpt. Victoria Spivey. Retrieved November 27, 2021, from http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/victoria-spivey
Victoria Spivey
Life and career
Born in Houston, Texas,[6] she was the daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flagman for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. She had two sisters, both of whom also sang professionally: Addie "Sweet Peas" (or "Sweet Pease") Spivey (August 22, 1910 – 1943),[5][4] who recorded for several major record labels between 1929 and 1937, and Elton Island Spivey Harris (1900–1971).[7][8]
Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston. After he died, the seven-year-old Victoria played on her own at local parties. In 1918, she was hired to accompany films at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas.[9] As a teenager, she worked in local bars, nightclubs, and buffet flats, mostly alone, but occasionally with singer-guitarists, including Blind Lemon Jefferson.[6] In 1926 she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, "Black Snake Blues" (1926),[10] sold well, and her association with the label continued. She recorded numerous sides for Okeh in New York City until 1929, when she switched to the Victor label. Between 1931 and 1937, more recordings followed for Vocalion Records and Decca Records,[6] and, working out of New York, she maintained an active performance schedule. Her recorded accompanists included King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Johnson, and Red Allen.[8]
The Depression did not put an end to Spivey's musical career. She found a new outlet for her talent in 1929, when the film director King Vidor cast her to play Missy Rose in his first sound film, Hallelujah!.[11] Through the 1930s and 1940s Spivey continued to work in musical films and stage shows, including the hit musical Hellzapoppin (1938), often with her husband, the vaudeville dancer Billy Adams.[6]
In 1951 Spivey retired from show business to play the pipe organ and lead a church choir, but she returned to secular music in 1961, when she was reunited with an old singing partner, Lonnie Johnson, to appear on four tracks on his Prestige Bluesville album Idle Hours. The folk music revival of the 1960s gave her further opportunities to make a comeback. She recorded again for Prestige Bluesville, sharing an album, Songs We Taught Your Mother, with fellow veterans Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin, and began making personal appearances at festivals and clubs, including the 1963 European tour of the American Folk Blues Festival.
In 1961 Spivey and the jazz and blues historian Len Kunstadt launched Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues, jazz, and related music, prolifically recording established artists, including Sippie Wallace, Lucille Hegamin, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Turner, Buddy Tate, and Hannah Sylvester, and also newer artists, including Luther Johnson, Brenda Bell, Washboard Doc, Bill Dicey, Robert Ross, Sugar Blue, Paul Oscher, Danny Russo, and Larry Johnson.[6]
In March 1962 Spivey and Big Joe Williams recorded for Spivey Records, with harmonica accompaniment and backup vocals by Bob Dylan. The recordings were released on Three Kings and the Queen (Spivey LP 1004) and Kings and the Queen Volume Two (Spivey LP 1014). (Dylan was listed under his own name on the record covers.[12] A picture of her and Bob Dylan from this period is shown on the back cover of the Dylan album New Morning.) In 1964 Spivey made her only recording with an all-white band, the Connecticut-based Easy Riders Jazz Band, led by the trombonist Big Bill Bissonnette. It was released first on an LP and later re-released on compact disc.
In Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, she appeared on French television, BBC-TV and Granada TV, but Americans may not have seen these screen appearances until their arrival on YouTube.[citation needed]
Spivey married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd, Billy Adams, and Len Kunstadt.[1]
Spivey died in New York on October 3, 1976, at the age of 69, from an internal hemorrhage.[4][13]
Selected discography
![[icon]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2010) |
Albums
- Idle Hours (Bluesville, 1961) with Lonnie Johnson (three tracks)
- Songs We Taught Your Mother (Bluesville, 1962) shared album with Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin (four tracks)
- Woman Blues! (Bluesville, 1962) with Lonnie Johnson
- A Basket of Blues (Spivey, 1962) shared album with Buddy Terry, Lucille Hegamin and Hannah Sylvester
- Victoria and Her Blues (Spivey, 1962)
- Three Kings and the Queen (Spivey, 1964) shared album with Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Williams and Lonnie Johnson
- The Queen and Her Knights (Spivey, 1965) shared album with Lonnie Johnson, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Slim and Sonny Greer
- Music Down Home: An Introduction to Negro Folk Music, U.S.A. (1965)[14]
- The Blues Is Life (1976)[15]
- Classic Piano Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2008)[16]
78 rpm singles - Okeh Records
8338A Victoria Spivey "Black Snake Blues" May 5, 1926
8338B Victoria Spivey "No More Jelly Bean Blues" May 11, 1926
8351A Victoria Spivey "Dirty Woman's Blues" May 5, 1926
8351B Victoria Spivey "Long Gone Blues" May 5, 1926
8370A Victoria Spivey "Spider Web Blues" August 12, 1926
8370B Victoria Spivey "Hoodoo Man Blues" August 11, 1926
8389A Victoria Spivey "Humored and Petted Blues" August 12, 1926
8389B Victoria Spivey "Blue Valley Blues" August 16, 1926
8401A Victoria Spivey "Big Houston Blues" August 13, 1926
8401B Victoria Spivey "Got the Blues So Bad" August 13, 1926
8410A Victoria Spivey "Its Evil Hearted Me" August 12, 1926
8410B Victoria Spivey "Santa Fe Blues" August 12, 1926
8464 Victoria Spivey "Idle Hour Blues" April 27, 1927
8464 Victoria Spivey "Steady Grind" April 27, 1927
8481 Victoria Spivey "Arkansas Road Blues" April 27, 1927
8481 Victoria Spivey "Alligator Pond Went Dry" April 27, 1927
8494 Victoria Spivey "No. 12 Let Me Roam" April 27, 1927
8494 Victoria Spivey "T.B Blues (West End Blues)" April 27, 1927
8517 Victoria Spivey "Christmas Morning Blues" October 28, 1927
8517 Victoria Spivey "Garter Snake Blues" October 28, 1927
8531 Victoria Spivey with L. Johnson "Dope Head Blues" October 28, 1927
8531 Victoria Spivey "Blood Thirsty Blues" October 31, 1927
8550 Victoria Spivey "Jelly Look What You Done Done" November 1, 1927
8550 Victoria Spivey "Red Lantern Blues" October 28, 1927
8565 Victoria Spivey "A Good Man is Hard to Find" November 1, 1927
8565 Victoria Spivey "Your Worries Ain't Like Mine" November 1, 1927
8581 Victoria Spivey "Nightmare Blues" October 31, 1927
8581 Victoria Spivey "Murder in the First Degree" October 31, 1927
8615 Victoria Spivey "My Handy Man" September 12, 1928
8615 Victoria Spivey "Organ Grinder Blues" September 12, 1928
8626 Victoria Spivey "New Black Snake Blues Part 2" October 13, 1928
8626 Victoria Spivey "New Black Snake Blues" October 13, 1928
8634 Victoria Spivey "No Papa No" October 17, 1928
8634 Victoria Spivey "Mosquito Fly and Flea" October 18, 1928
8652 Victoria Spivey/L. Johnson "Furniture Man #2 Blues" October 18, 1928
8652 Victoria Spivey "Furniture Man Blues" October 18, 1928
8713 Victoria Spivey "How Do They Do It That Way" July 10, 1929
8713 Victoria Spivey "Funny Feathers" July 10, 1929
8733 Victoria Spivey "You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now" July 3, 1929
8744A Lonnie Johnson/Victoria Spivey "Toothache Blues" October 17, 1928
8744B Lonnie Johnson/Victoria Spivey "Toothache Blues #2" October 18, 1928
78 rpm singles - Victor Records
23349 Victoria Spivey "Baulin Water Blues" June 26, 1930
23349 Victoria Spivey "Baulin Water Blues" (second version) June 26, 1930
38546 Victoria Spivey "Moaning the Blues" October 1, 1929
38546 Victoria Spivey "Telephoning the Blues" October 1, 1929
38570 Victoria Spivey "Bloodhound Blues" October 1, 1929
38570 Victoria Spivey "Dirty Tee Be Blues" October 1, 1929
38584 Victoria Spivey "New York Blues" February 4, 1930
38584 Victoria Spivey "Showered With the Blues" February 4, 1930
38598 Victoria Spivey "Haunted by the Blues" February 4, 1930
38598 Victoria Spivey "Lonesome With the Blues" February 4, 1930
38609 Victoria Spivey "You've Gotta Have What It Takes" June 26, 1930
38609 Victoria Spivey "You've Gotta Have What It Takes" (second version) June 26, 1930
See also
- Classic female blues
- List of blues musicians
- List of classic female blues singers
- List of country blues musicians
- List of vaudeville performers: L–Z
- Spivey Records
Bibliography
- Cohn, Lawrence, ed. (1993). Nothing but the Blues: The Music and the Musicians. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group. ISBN 1-55859-271-7.
External links
- Victoria Spivey's record label
- Guide to the Victoria Spivey Collection, 1925-1940, 1961-1976, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University - Newark
- Victoria Spivey papers, circa 1960–1976, Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
- Victoria Spivey (1908-1976) on Red Hot Jazz Archive
- Illustrated Spivey Records discography Stefan Wirz
- Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Victoria Spivey papers, circa 1960-1976
Victoria Spivey (1906 – 1976)
Victoria Regina Spivey was born on October 15, 1906, one of four daughters of Grant and Addy (Smith) Spivey, in Texas. Everybody in the family sang, and Victoria started piano lessons very early.
Her mother worked as a nurse, and loved to sing semi-classical songs and hymns. Her father worked a day job as a flagman for the railroad, but by night he was a musician with his own string band, where the little girls got their first professional experience. Grant Spivey died when Victoria was only seven, so she began playing and singing at private parties. She was just 12 years old when the Lincoln Theater in Dallas hired her to accompany films. In her teens, she worked in bars, nightclubs, private parties run by “house ladies,” and gambling houses, usually as a solo act, but sometimes with other musicians like Lazy Daddy Fillmore and Blind Lemon Jefferson. At 20, when she moved to St. Louis, she was a tall, striking woman and already a seasoned veteran. She made her first recording there, for Okeh records, of her own song, “Black Snake Blues” and it sold well, beginning her recording career. Most of her recordings would be of her own songs.
She married trumpeter Reuben Floyd, the first of four marriages. Her second husband was dancer Billy Adams, who performed with her in the 1930s.
Spivey also recorded for Vocation and Decca Records from ‘31 into the 1940s. She worked in musical films and stage shows, including the 1938 hit Hellzappoppin in which she and Billy Adams both appeared. With her sisters she went on tour in vaudeville houses and barrel-houses through Missouri, Texas and Michigan. Somehow along the way, she found time to raise two daughters.
Her career slowed down after the war years, and by the late 50s she was settled in her home in Brooklyn, working as the administrator for her church and devoting time to the church choir and playing the organ. Her companion, Len “Kazoo Papa" Kunstadt, was a pioneering blues and jazz historian.
During the folk and blues revival of the 1960s, she started her own record label, Spivey Records, with Kunstadt.
She produced her own recordings, but also worked with other artists, both veterans like Sippie Wallace (who she talked out of retirement), Hannah Sylvester, Big Joe Williams, and Luther Johnson, and with
some promising newcomers. One of her earliest releases was “Three Kings
and the Queen” (1962), which included a young Bob Dylan on blues
harmonica and backing vocals. Encouraged by Kunstadt, she started writing articles for music magazines like Sound and Fury and Kunstadt’s Record Research.
In 1970, BMI awarded her the Commendation for Excellence for her “long and outstanding contribution to the many worlds of music."
Victoria Regina Spivey died in New York in the fall of 1976, just 12 days before her 70th birthday, from an internal hemorrhage. She is honored in the Texas Music Hall of Fame at the Houston Institute for Culture.
Len Kunstadt managed Spivey Records into the 1980s. The label was revived in 2007, to offer remastered versions of now-rare Spivey label recordings.
“The Queen of the Blues” once said, “The blues is life and life is the blues...Most all my blues is about myself.” In Spivey’s signature song, “Black Snake Blues" you can her hard-edged, tantalizing delivery, a vocalization she called her “tiger squall,” in both her 1926 version and in the 1963 take with her old friend Lonnie Johnson. Her smile still lights up the room.
Sources:
- Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s, ©1988 by Daphne Harrison, Rutgers University Press
- The Blues Lady — www.blackpast.org/…
- Victoria Spivey — www.redhotjazz.com/…
- Victoria Regina Spivey — tshaonline.org/…
- Len Kunstadt — en.wikipedia.org/…
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/spivey-victoria-1906-1976/
Victoria Spivey (1906-1976)
Victoria Spivey grew up in a musical family where her father, Grant, played in a string band while sisters, Addie and Elton, sang the blues. But it was Victoria who became the star with a beginning that took her moaning style of singing into honky tonks, bordellos, men’s clubs and gin mills all over Texas. In 1926, she left for St. Louis and acquired a recording contract with OKeh records but found her stride in New York where she continued to record but performed in all the elite nightclubs, appeared in the musical, Hellzapoppin’ Revue, took a lead role in Hallelujah, the first musical feature film with an all black cast, and sang with the big bands in the 1940s. The crossover into the big band jazz genre allowed her to join Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, and Benny Goodman on stages across the country. As the country’s musical tastes changed in the 1950s, she became an organist and choir master in her church and then in the 1960s she enjoyed a revival of her blues career.
Spivey was born in Houston, Texas, in 1906 but made New York her home. She was attractive, classy, tall, and well educated for singers of her day. She carried all these attributes into the show business world where she not only became a noted singer but also a competent songwriter and savvy businesswomen. During her 1960s comeback, she formed her own record company and signed such artists as Sippie Wallace (who she urged out of retirement), Hannah Sylvester, Luther Johnson, and the young Bob Dylan.
Spivey believed that, “The blues is life and life is the blues.” Her signature songs included “Black Snake Blues,” “Dirty Tee Bee Blues,” “Detroit Moan,” and “Dope Head Blues.” She stamped each song with her moaning sound and uniquely sexy, tantalizing delivery.
1961 or '62 Victoria Spivey session
(Len Kunstadt Interview)
May 2, 1996
German 'Blues Forum' magazine, issue No. 13, 1st quarter of 1984,carried excerpts from Norbert Hess' interview with Len Kunstadt of'Record Research' and 'Spivey Records'. Kunstadt relates how he metVictoria Spivey, became her agent and manager (and later her husband),and how they founded their own labels (Queen Vee and Spivey Records). These are the Dylan related excerpts from that interview translated
back into English:
"Victoria knew the musicians and scouted for new talent. This went onfor 16 years. In my opinion, from 1961 up to her death in 1976, shewas more creative thanever before. Her fantastic way of winning overWillie Dixon and Muddy Waters for our company, and her concern for Bob Dylan. Sometimes I thought she was crazy. I could tell a lot ofstories. The musicians would have killed for her. At first, theydidn't like her, but after a split second they became her fans up the very end. She was sometimes a little difficult because she was a genius." (p. 11)
NORBERT HESS: "On one of the Spivey albums (LP 1014, 'Kings and the Queen') I saw a picture of Bob Dylan, who became the most famous ofyour artists. Where did you find him?"
LEN KUNSTADT: "That was at Gerde's Folk City. He played his harmonica, onstage with Big Joe Williams, and one day he approached Victoria: 'Doyou want a little white boy on your label?' Victoria replied: 'Why are
you saying this? I don't care about the color of your skin. Why don'tyou come along with Big Joe Williams?' And so he carried Big Joe'sguitar case into the studio, took out his harmonica and played. Well, Len Kunstadt did not want Bob Dylan. I wanted Sonny Boy Williamson. I
knew some of his recordings, 'Eyesight to the Blind' was one of Victoria's favorite 45s. Dylan often joined Victoria, he sang with her at the Bottom Line, Victoria sang 'Black Snake Blues' with the Muddy Waters Blues Band and Dylan played harmonica. All those stories!" (p.11)
The article also has a photograph of Victoria Spivey appearing as partof the 1963 American Folk Blues Festival in Baden-Baden (southernGermany), dated 'late September 1963' (re: '1963 American Folk Blues Festival' posts)
Robert Ross in Robbie Wolifer's 'Hoot! A 25-Year History of the Greenwich Village Music Scene' about Victoria Spivey:
'She was kind to everybody. Not just those who played the blues. She helped with encouragement, gigs, and her record company... What she did for Dylan, she did for so many others. She saw something in him. She had an eye for talent... It was a great loss when she died. Even
Dylan sent a wreath to the funeral home when she died.' (pp. 108-110)
On a related note: Blues Forum No. 17/18 (Jun 1985), in its section "Anything (Im)Possible," states that Len Kunstadt is going through Spivey Records' tapes and plans to issue an album of 'live recordings by Victoria Spivey and Lonnie Johnson, recorded at Gerde's Folk City in 1961.'
Has this album ever been released? Dick Waterman, can you possibly shed some light on this? Thanks in advance.
https://gailpellettproductions.com/a-tribute-to-victoria-spivey/
A Tribute to Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey was one of the Classic Women Blues Singers who flourished during the 20’s — like Mamie Smith, Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Alberta Hunter. These women ushered in a new more cosmopolitan form of Blues singing and performing that corresponded to the mass migration of African-Americans out of the south to northern cities. While a number of these women either died or drifted into obscurity in the 1930s, Spivey continued an active career.
This one hour tribute to Spivey was recorded live in the studios of WBAI-FM in New York in November, 1975 just a month after she died at the age of 69. While I often produced highly edited and mixed documentaries, this was one opportunity to sit at the controls, play cuts from Spivey’s recordings and talk about her life. This program was followed by a live performance of the Dicey Ross Blues Band, one of the younger bands that Spivey recorded on her label
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Born in Houston, Texas, Spivey grew up singing and playing the piano. She started performing at the age of 12 and by 16 she had moved to St. Louis where she recorded her first song, Blacksnake Blues, with Okeh records. She would continue recording many of her own songs with Okeh, then RCA Victor and other companies until she started her own recording company.
Spivey had a distinct moaning quality to her singing which identified her as a Texan singer as a number of the women blues singers from that state were known as the Texas moaners. Over the years she performed with Blind Lemon Jefferson, King Oliver, Lonnie Johnson and Louis Armstrong as well as many others.
Spivey performed on stages, in clubs, theaters and in musical films along with her husband, vaudeville dancer, Billy Adams. In 1962, with help from jazz historian Len Kundstadt, she launched Spivey Records. Among the blues greats her label recorded were Sippie Wallace, Otis Span, Hanna Sylvester and Willie Dixon. She also recorded younger artists like Bob Dylan, Luther Johnson and Sugar Blue.
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There's a wonderful YouTube piece -- film footage -- of Spivey accompanying herself at the piano while singing "TB Blues," a strange song she wrote about a friend years before who had TB. "TB Blues 1963 recording"
Victoria Spivey - Paris Moan 1973 France (Live video)
Victoria Spivey-How Do You Do It That Way -
born Oct.15, 1906 Victoria Spivey "My Handy Man"
Victoria Spivey - T. B. Blues (1976)
Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson - Dope Head Blues (1927)
Victoria Spivey - Going Blues
Victoria Spivey - Any Kind Of Man
Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson-Toothache Blues
Victoria Spivey - The Blues Is Life
