I’ve made a little 8track of 8 of the women singers I played in my late night set at MLX9.
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I tend to think of the women I like to DJ for blues as ‘dirty nannas’, and I’ve banged on about this here ad nauseum. This isn’t quite 100% dirty nannas. Some of the women here were younger when they recorded these songs. But all of them had attitude. I tent to play far too many vocal tracks when I DJ for blues dancers. I think it is, in part, because I’m really not a very experienced blues DJ, and because I don’t have a whole lot of music I’d play for blues dancers. But it also probably has something to do with the fact that I like my music for blues dancing to carry levels of meaning. More than just a straight out ‘grab you partner and cuddle’ imperatives. I like irony and parody and suggestion.
At any rate, this is only a small chunk of the stuff I played in that set, and when you listen to it here or on the 8track site it won’t be in the order I played them. So imagine there are other songs in between them, cushioning the changes.
A note: that version of Fine and Mellow is about the most perfect performance on earth. You can (and really should) watch it here:
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Hound Dog Big Mama Thornton 76 Very Best Of 2:52
Rosetta Blues Rosetta Howard acc. Harlem Hamfats 103 1937 History of the Blues (disc 02) 3:00
Jealous Hearted Blues Carol Ralph 80 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 3:48
Kitchen Blues Martha Davis 80 1947 BluesWomen: Girls Play And Sing The Blues 3:05
Fine And Mellow Mal Waldron and the All-Stars (Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Hinton) 79 1957 The Sound Of Jazz 6:22 best live on CBS TV ‘Legendary sound of jazz’ 1950s small female vocal Swinging blues 60 14/01/07 4:58 PM
3 O’clock In The Morning Blues Ike and Tina Turner 64 1969 Putumayo Presents: Mississippi Blues 2:40
Hard Times Mildred Anderson 67 1960 No More In Life 4:15
Gimme A Pigfoot Bessie Smith acc by Buck and his Band (Frank Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Buck Washington, Bobby Johnson, Billy Taylor) 1933 Complete Jazz Series 1929 – 1933 3:30
8 dirty nannas
