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Blues queen born in Houston
On this day in 1898, blues singer Sippie Wallace was born in Houston.
Beulah Thomas Wallace was part of a large and musically talented family;
her older brother George W. Thomas, Jr., was a pianist, songwriter, and
publisher, and her younger brother Hersal was a jazz piano prodigy who
died in his mid-twenties. In 1916 Sippie moved to New Orleans to work
with George; there she met such jazz pioneers as Louis Armstrong, Sidney
Bechet, and King Oliver. In 1923 she moved to Chicago, where she made
her recording debut on the Okeh label; three months later, she was a
star with a national reputation. Her songs, such as the classics "Mighty
Tight Woman" and "Woman Be Wise," spoke with earthy directness about
love and relationships. After her brother Hersal and her husband both
died in 1936, however, Wallace moved to Detroit and gave up blues in
favor of gospel music. Victoria R. Spivey, another Texas artist,
persuaded her to return to performing in the 1960s. The "tough-minded"
lyrics of some of Wallace's songs transcended the blues era in which
they were written and appealed to younger audiences, including most
notably the singer Bonnie Raitt, who in the 1970s and 1980s almost
singlehandedly revived the older woman's career. Wallace's 1983 comeback
album, Sippie, was nominated for a Grammy Award, and in 1985 she
made her first appearance in Texas in more than sixty years.
Coincidentally, she died in Detroit on her eighty-eighth birthday,
November 1, 1986.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- WALLACE, BEULAH THOMAS [SIPPIE]
- BLUES
- JAZZ
- SPIVEY, VICTORIA REGINA
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Like joins like as Belle Starr marries horse thief Jim Reed (1866)
- Burnet County powers up (1939)
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