ann arbor blues & jazz festival

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Sippie Wallace and Bonnie Raitt Prove That Blues Birds of a Feather Can Flock Together

on April 12, 1982 No comments
By Carl Arrington, Maryanne George

Sippie Wallace, 83, is a stout black woman whose heyday as a blues singer was in the 1920s. Bonnie Raitt, 32, is a lean, fast-living rock ‘n’ roller who travels in WASPy music circles in L.A. Sippie is a believing Baptist whose friends and contemporaries have included Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong. Bonnie, more devout in her liberal politics than in religion, numbers among her friends Jane Fonda, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash.

They have in common dazzling dimples, red hair (Sippie’s is store-bought), a fierce feeling for the blues and a spunky attitude summed up by a line from Mighty Tight Woman, a song written by Wallace that both have recorded: “There is nothing, nothing that I fear.” Raitt and Wallace are also close friends. “We are two souls who have known each other before,” says Bonnie. “It’s a connection that transcends age and space. She’s more my own grandma than my natural grandmother.” Sippie reciprocates, “I love Bonnie.”

The friendship will soon be reflected in the marketplace. Bonnie has a scorcher LP called Green Light that’s doing wheelies up the charts. Sippie, Wallace’s first recording in 16 years, has set off an industry buzz before its late-April release. Wallace has provided Bonnie with tunes over the years; Bonnie sat in on three tracks in Sippie’s new album.

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Two Worlds Come Together at the Blues

on May 9, 1976 No comments
BY CARL ARRINGTON

The odyssey of Bonnie Raitt and Sippie Wallace is a tale of sisterhood wrought of redemption and songs of heartbreak. Together they comprise an odd but well-matched pair of singers who have walked down the same blues alley from different worlds.

Sippie is one of the few surviving foremothers of the blues, and Bonnie is perhaps the most popular current artist using that vintage musical format.

This Thursday, these two women from different blues eras will make a rare appearance together in Sippie’s hometown of Detroit. The concert is scheduled for 8 p.m. at the Showcase Theater, Van Dyke and Harper.

THOUGH BOTH ladies have careers cast in blue, the contrast of their lives is startling.

Sippie is a stout black woman who grew up poor and Baptist in Texas and became a widely known blues singer in the 1920s. Bonnie, who is white, red-haired and freckled, was born to a show biz family of Quakers in Burbank, Calif.

Sippie Is rather proper and still very devoted to her church while Bonnie lives the freewheeling life of a traveling rock minstrel. Bonnie is 26, Sippie is exactly thrice that age.

While most of Bonnie’s performances these days are in sold-out arenas, Sippie plays to packed chapels every Sunday. While Bonnie’s work leans on a foundation of folk and rock, Sippie’s entire style is deeply rooted in gospel.

Yet these two women are linked by the soul experience of the blues. Their relationship is reminiscent of other female apprenticeships: Gertrude (Ma) Rainey trained Bessie Smith, who was in turn post-humously idolized by the late Janis Joplin.

Both Sippie and Bonnie have been active in promoting the cause of women. Sippie was among the first to talk to women frankly through the lyrics of her songs about their relationships with men. Bonnie does the same thing for the women of the 1970s.

The greatest similarity between the two singers is their disarming, gregarious friendliness. Any visitor to Sippie’s very humble home in downtown Detroit is likely to be treated to a performance of rare tunes like “Adam and Eve Had the Blues” or “The Special Delivery Blues.” Similarly, Bonnie avoids the pretentions of stardom.

Bonnie has spent a considerable amount of effort trying to win deserved recognition for such blues artists as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Mississippi Fred McDowell. “Soon Taj Mahal (another blues performer) and I will be the only ones left who really knew our musical ancestors,” Bonnie said recently.

However, Bonnie’s favorite cause is Sippie Wallace-the woman she considers her prime mentor and affectionately refers to as “my sassy grandmother.”

SIPPIE WAS of the generation of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Chippie Hill, Margaret Johnson, Hociel Thomas (Sippie’s niece) and Mamie Smith.

She was born Beulah Thomas in Houston, Texas, in 1898. Her parents, Fanny and George Thomas, with eight girls and five boys of their own, took in five orphans as well.

Beulah eventually gave way to “Sippie,” a nickname given because her teeth were late in coming in and thus she had to sip everything she ate.

Sippie’s parents were devout members of the Shiloh Baptist Church-her father was an elder deacon and her mother was head of the women’s auxiliary.

Friends and singers Bonnie Raitt and Detroiter Sippie Wallace. When Bonnie first heard Sippie, “I just couldn’t believe it. . . the best thing I had ever heard, so raw and sassy.” © Michael Dobo

As in the life of most blues singers, the church played a vital part in the development of Sippie’s talent. There she learned voice, harmony and how to play the keyboards. “For me there ain’t no difference between blues and gospel except for the words. And besides,” laughs Sippie, “I put the BE-BOP in everything I do anyway!”

Sippie had her first hit in 1923 when she recorded “Up the Country” and “Shorty George” for the Okeh label.

According to Ron Harwood, who has researched the sales figures, Sippie sold hundreds of thousands of records during the 1920s.

Musicians on Sippie’s records included Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Eddie Heywood, Buddy Christian and Clarence Williams.

IN 1927, Sippie moved to Detroit, but Sippie’s career, along with those of millions, came to an abrupt halt in 1929 with the Depression.

After that, with the exception of a few revivals, Sippie disappeared from the music scene until the late 1960s. She is reluctant to talk about the years in between when she had two daughters, lost her husband and buried most of her brothers and sisters.

Sippie was rediscovered in 1965 in Detroit by a couple of young, white jazz enthusiasts, Sam Stark and Ron Harwood. Stark had read, in an article by Victoria Spivey (another blues veteran) in an obscure journal called Record Research, that Sippie was still living in Detroit.

In October 1965, Sippie invited Harwood and Stark to her home. There they taped her singing. “We were just amazed,” said Harwood.

When asked what she thought about singing the blues after so many years she replied, “I can understand the blues after so many years. I can sing them now-I know what they are. I know what’s goin’ on.”

Shortly thereafter Sippie’s discoverers arranged for her to play a few dates with the Kweskin Jug Band-a group which at one time included Otis Spann, Geoff Muldaur and Maria Muldaur.

While playing at the Newport Jazz and Blues Festival in 1966, Sippie met Dick Waterman, who is perhaps the single most important and knowledgeable blues promoter in the world.

Waterman invited her to join the American Folk Blues Festival which toured Europe in the latter part of 1966 with such artists as Junior Wells, Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery.

While in Copenhagen they recorded an album on the Storyville label-a company whose records rarely made it across the Atlantic to the U.S.A. It was that album that later brought Bonnie and Sippie together.

After that tour, Sippie started having some health problems with arthritis and later had a stroke.

MEANTIME, Bonnie had grown from a rather reserved childhood into an energetic, peaceable renegade. She was born in 1949 to Marge and John Raitt. It was about the same time Sippie became the full-time organist for the Leland Baptist Church in Detroit.

Bonnie’s father was a noted actor who starred in Broadway hits like “Pajama Game,” “Carousel” and “Oklahoma!”

Bonnie’s parents were as devoted to their peaceful Quaker traditions as Sippie’s folks were to the hallelujah salvation of the Baptists.

In 1958, Bonnie’s parents and grandparents chipped in to buy her a $25 guitar for Christmas. Even then her musical tastes were somewhat different that those of her peers. No Frankie Avalon or surf stuff for her-R&B was the sound that moved Bonnie.

For college, Bonnie chose Radcliffe, the queen of the Seven Sister colleges and as well a center of the counterculture movement.

While there, Bonnie played in folkie bars and eventually met Waterman, the blues promoter. However, at the time blues was still riding in the back of the bus while psychedelic music was the craze.

In the summer of 1968, Bonnie went with two girlfriends to Europe. In London Bonnie ran across a blues anthology album. Among the artists was Sippie Wallace.

“When I listened to it I just couldn’t believe it. Sippie was the best thing I had ever heard,” recalls Bonnie. “It was so raw and sassy-even more so than Bessie Smith.”

IT WASN’T until four years later that Bonnie finally met Sippie. It was in 1972 at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. Waterman, who was managing Bonnie at the time, remembers, “I reminded Bonnie that Sippie lived only 40 miles away from the festival and we decided to make her contract for the event hinge on giving some stage time to Sippie.”

There, in the shadow of the performers’ tent, Sippie and Bonnie met for the first time. Even though Sippie was still recovering from her stroke, Waterman recalls that it was gleeful occasion.

Bonnie Raitt performs during the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival at Otis Spann Memorial Field in Ann Arbor on September 10, 1972
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Ann Arbor Blues Festival (Ann Arbor, Michigan) 1972
Ann Arbor Blues Festival (Ann Arbor, Michigan) 1972

At that time Bonnie was relatively unknown. However, after the show, she instructed Waterman to turn over a certain portion of their meager earnings to Sippie. Later in the day Sippie pulled Bonnie into a corner and tried to give her the money back.

In the past two years, Sippie and Bonnie have traded songs and letters and performed together on a few occasions in places like Boston and Washington, D.C.

When they play together, their mutual affection and admiration is apparent. Sippie usually begins by singing some of her favorite blues, then plays a little gospel and then is joined by Bonnie and her group for some songs like “Mighty Tight Woman” and “Women Be Wise.” Sippie leads the way on gospel tunes like “Amazing Grace.” Bonnie’s tender pleading and bottleneck-guitar playing compliment Sippie’s spirited, rough voice.

The last time they played together was in Ann Arbor last November. It was Sippie’s birthday. After Sippie unveiled her “Bonnie, You’re So Wonderful,” a song written in tribute to her young friend, Bonnie led the packed house at Hill Auditorium in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

As they stood arm in arm clutching each other they reflected the sweet, tortured gleam of the blues.

About The Author

Detroit Free Press – May 9, 1976
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Singer Bonnie Raitt has roots in blues

on January 25, 1976 No comments

By Mary Campbell

AP Newsfeatures Writer

   A lot can be said about Bonnie Raitt. She’s known for blues but she performs contemporary ballads as well. She travels a lot but in 1975 bought a house with a white picket fence around it. Her career is built more on live performances than on recordings.
She has firm political and social convictions and plays a lot of benefits for organizations she believes in. She’s the 26-year-old daughter of singer John Raitt, Broadway star of ‘‘Carousel” and “Pajama Game.”
   Her parents, says Miss Raitt, are proud of her, not disapproving, though they wish she had finished college. In one week late last year, she gave a Lincoln Center concert which her parents attended; her father opened in a Broadway musical revue which she attended, and there was a party for both those occasions and her birthday at Sardi’s. “It was a mixture of my band and my end of the music business, his old leading ladies and friends all attempting to dress casually. It was real fun.”

Folk Guitarist
   Miss Raitt grew up mainly in Southern California in an atmosphere of Broadway show tunes and surfing music but liking best soul, folk and blues. “I started playing guitar at 10 or 12, picked up folk and by the time I was 14 I was playing blues guitar.” She rushed East for college to be part of the folk scene in Cambridge, Mass. “Of course when I got there, it had closed. Rock music had descended.
   “In 1968 I went to Europe. I thought I’d heard every blues record. In England they had some unreleased material.’’ That’s where Miss Raitt first heard the music of Sippie Wallace.
   “I recorded two of her songs on my first album. I got to meet her finally in 1972 at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. I do her songs mostly because I like them the best and she is alive. She is one of the few who could benefit from me doing her songs. She celebrated her 77th birthday recently. She lives in Detroit, is black and was one of the classical blues singers of the ’20s. Her lyrics are raunchy in a kind of refreshing double entendre, not bawdy. A lot more touching and a Randy Newman kind of off-the-wall lyrics.

Joint Concerts
   “She’s had a stroke but now she is much healthier and we’re starting to do a lot of concerts together. As I get more successful I can travel around with some of these older blues people. I got to know them all. It’s ironic and maddening that my fame has eclipsed theirs. I find it hard to take and I’ve wrestled with it a lot. I know it should be reversed
   “I know they’re great and I’m going to make sure that kids that like me are going to see the real thing, too.”
Miss Raitt and Miss Wallace both are heard on the 1973 Atlantic album “Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival.” Her own records, on Warner Brothers, one a year since 1971, are “Bonnie Raitt,” “Give it Up,” “Takin ’ My Time,” “Streetlights” and “Home Plate.”
   Miss Raitt doesn’t want to be typed only as a blues performer. “My records are half rhythm ‘n’ blues and country blues and half contemporary ballads by young songwriters. I’ll probably always keep the same mix. People want to type you. Linda Ronstadt actually does quite a bit of Jackson Browne kind of stuff, not just country, and Maria Muldaur has resurrected some old and Motown songs.

Song Shortage
   “It’s getting hard to find tunes now. We actually draw from the same type of material. We’re all having to dig deeper into whatever it was made us different. And it’s tough on the road. We all tend to draw the same audiences. We take half of each other’s audience if we’re coming around too often. Who has enough money to go to all three of our concerts?
   “There is room for all of us but it’s getting a little sticky now. We’re running out of favorite songs we’ve known since we were 15 that we always wanted to do.
   “I solicit tapes everyplace I go. I get back off a tour and find 20 boxes of songs. “
Her political and social views started from a Quaker upbringing, Miss Raitt says. “It was a social orientation, hands around the world, pacifist, the American Friends Service Committee. I went to Quaker camp the last two years of high school and became a leftist, liberal progressive. Now it seems the radicalism of the ’60s has become the common sense of the 70s.

Plays Benefits
   “Right now I’m involved with helping Tom Hayden run for Senate in California. It is nice to run up and down the state doing benefits and including local musicians.” She does about 50 benefit concerts a year, accepting expenses, no performance fee. “I do them for women’s community health centers, legal assistance projects, listener-sponsored radio stations. They pass out information in the lobby. I think it’s important.
   Miss Raitt has a boyfriend and she says, “It’s real tough to maintain a relationship when one of us is zooming around.” There are difficulties when the woman is the one who travels and who makes more money. “Luckily, I’ve watched other people make mistakes and I’m trying not to make those. There are going to be some rocky times but we’re working on it real hard and it’s coming along nice.” Last April she put a downpayment on a house “that looks like a house where Greer Garson waits for somebody to come back from the war.”


© Copyright: The (Bakersfield, CA) Times


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