I’m really pleased to have the chance to tell people about Sippie Wallace. She’s been my idol and my biggest influence ever since I first heard her sing. I’ve never actually met her before this weekend, so this is really a special occasion for me.

I first started to play guitar and listen to blues when I was growing up in Los Angeles. I used to go to the Ash Grove and see Lightning Hopkins, Brownie & Sonny and whoever else was coming into town.

After I moved to the Boston area to go to college, I had the opportunity to see Son House, Fred McDowell, Arthur Crudup and other bluesmen that don’t get out to the West Coast very often. I visited Skip James in Philadelphia about a year before he died, and it was just hypnotic to watch him play guitar. He was really a genius in the way that his mind worked on musical ideas.

I had started to play some slide guitar things before I came East, and I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time with Son House and Fred McDowell and Johnny Shines. I also love to watch J.B. Hutto, Hound Dog Taylor and some of the other Chicago slide guitarists. I listened to a lot of Robert Johnson, of course, and tried to figure out some of the things that he was doing.

This festival just isn’t going to be the same without Fred McDowell here. It’s not just that he was a great musician but he was also an incredible human being. He used to show me runs on the guitar and keep encouraging me all the time. He brought laughter and good feelings to everyone that he met, and I was really lucky to have been able to spend a lot of time with him.

I don’t consider myself to be a blues singer, so in some ways I guess that I’m out of place at this festival. I do a lot of songs by contemporary young writers, but I also do those blues songs that I really like. I’m not trying to sound like Robert Johnson or Fred McDowell or Tommy Johnson. I just do the material in my own way without getting into any kind of imitation.

When I was in Europe a few years ago, I bought a Sippie Wallace album on a discount label called Storyville. She had recorded it when she was there on tour in 1966 with Little Brother Montgomery and Roosevelt Sykes playing piano behind her. I fell in love with her style right away. This isn’t meant to be any kind of an insult to Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey or any of the other great women singers. I just loved the material that Sippie wrote, the way that she phrased her lyrics, and I could really identify with the man-woman relationship in her songs. None of the cutesy-pie bullshit for her. She really has her head together. That’s the main reason why I’m glad she’s here this weekend. Sippie Wallace isn’t some relic or just a faint voice on some old 78s. She really has something to say that counts just as much now as it did years ago. I hope that you’ll take the time to listen to her this weekend.

–Bonnie Raitt