JESSIE MAE HEMPHILL

Jessie Mae Hemphill teixeix fortes tradicions Delta en el seu estil idiosincràtic. Hemphill ve d'un fons musical - segons els informes, el seu avi va ser gravat en els camps per Alan Lomax en els anys 40. Jessie Mae va aprendre a tocar la guitarra de molt petita . Al llarg dels anys 60 i 70, va cantar amb diverses bandes del  Mississippi. En els anys 80, va decidir seguir una carrera en solitari.

Hemphill va començar a tocar  en solitari, recolzant-se només amb una guitarra acústica i percussió. El 1981, va llançar el seu àlbum debut, She Wolf , en el segell discogràfic Europeu Vogue. El 1987, el seu primer disc  nord-americà, Feelin 'Good, va ser gravat Al 1987 i 1988, va guanyar el Premi de Handy WC a la millor artista de Blues tradicional en l´apartat femení Hemphill abandonar una carrera discogràfica després de finals dels anys 80, però ella va continuar realitzant en els anys 90.

 A la fotografía amb VICENTE ZÚMEL /LA HORA DEL BLUES., Músic español , armonicista de reconeguda categoría mundial, expert com pocs en el món del Blues de totes les époques i que continúa en actiu mitjançant la seva web com a difusor a tots els nivells de tot el que tingui gust de Blues nacional e internacional. 

Jessie Mae Hemphill

1923–2006

Blues musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist, percussionist

Blues musician and vocalist Jessie Mae Hemphill was a paradox. Her rough exterior portrayed a tough, independent woman. Yet the beauty of her voice exposed her delicate femininity. Known as the She-Wolf of country hills blues music, Hemphill enjoyed a many decade long career. A regular performer at blues festivals into the early 2000s, Jessie Mae Hemphill, outfitted in a sequined hat and shiny purple halter top, stood out onstage for her age as well as her appearance. With a wink in her eye and a gold tooth flashing, Hemphill strummed her guitar, shook bells attached to her legs, and tapped a tambourine with her foot. The music of her one-woman band was haunting—familiar, yet new. It drew from the traditions of North Mississippi Delta region—music born of slavery, reared in poverty, and perfected on the farmland. Hemphill played it with her own style, updating classic lyrics with her own words—"the thoughts I have about times and about living and life," she wrote in the liner notes to her album She-Wolf. Her distinctive mix of new and old Delta traditions with day-to-day observations, won Hemphill international acclaim as a blues woman. She, however, was just carrying on the family tradition.

Born into Musical Family

Hemphill was born Jessie Mae Graham in Senatobia, Mississippi. Though some sources cite her birth year as 1932, 1934, or 1937, the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation referenced October 18, 1923, as her birth date. No matter the exact year, one thing is sure: Hemphill was born with music in her blood. Her father, James Graham, was a blues pianist and her mother, Virgie Lee Graham, was skilled in many instruments, though she did not identify herself as a musician. Hemphill has said that, although her mother was not interested in playing music, her Aunt Rosa was, and she believed that they both inherited their passion for music from Hemphill's maternal grandfather, Sid Hemphill. The elder Hemphill was a well-known leader of fife-and-drum groups and had a successful career that spanned 50 years. Fife-and-drum, a traditional music native to the North Mississippi Delta region, has long interested ethnomusicologists because of its links to African musical styles. Sid Hemphill recorded with famed musicologist Alan Lomax in the 1940s. Sid Hemphill, in turn, had his musical roots sown by his father, Doc Hemphill, a Choctaw Indian and famed fiddler. This rich generational musical heritage proved the foundation for Jessie Mae Hemphill's own musical career. "All of the Hemphills was music players. And so I'm the last one. I'm just trying to play to keep the Hemphill music going. And trying not to let my granddaddy down," she told Guitar Player in 1991.

With such a musical pedigree it was almost inevitable that Hemphill would become a musician at an early age. She was eight years old when she began to learn guitar. "When I was little," she told Guitar Player, "my granddaddy started me off to playing guitar, and I started off playing blues. I liked the spirituals, but I played the blues because I thought that would get me somewhere in the money line faster than the spirituals would." The first complete song she learned was her Aunt Rosa Lee's "Bullyin' Well" which later appeared on her album She-Wolf.

Following her grandfather's lead as a multi-instrumentalist, Hemphill did not confine herself to the guitar. She soon began learning drums and eventually picked up the tambourine, fife, flute, trombone, saxophone, harmonica, and piano. As a teen she began to perform and even won contests for her tambourine skills. Further cementing her link with her heritage, Hemphill learned to play instruments with clear African roots, including the quills—homemade cane pipes similar to panpipes—and the diddley bow, a one-stringed instrument that is plucked or played with a glass bottle. However, it was for the guitar, drum, and tambourine that Hemphill became best known. Hemphill learned from listening to her relatives, noting for Guitar Player that her Aunt Rosa showed her how to play songs. Hemphill also said that she had to "learn how to make the sound in my head."

During the 1950s and 1960s, though she was a skilled performer, Hemphill worked a series of menial jobs including stints in grocery stores and dry cleaners. She moved to Memphis during this time and married J. D. Brooks. Music found its way back into Hemphill's life when she landed a job at a Memphis blues club. This led to her running her own club for a brief while. It wasn't until the 1970s that Hemphill would turn to her inherited role as a musician full-time.

Made Name for Herself as Hemphill

When her marriage ended, Hemphill left Memphis and returned to Mississippi and her musical roots. She dropped her married name and adopted her more famous family name. About this time Hemphill caught the attention of Dr. David Evans, a noted ethnomusicologist, blues scholar, and talented musician in his own right. In the liner notes of Hemphill's album, She-Wolf, Evans wrote, "I was struck with what a fresh approach she had to an old style of music." He continued, "She had drawn on the deepest traditions of the blues and African-American folk music to create truly contemporary country blues, not nostalgic recreations of an earlier musical era."

In 1979 Evans received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to record and produce Mississippi blues music. Under his tutelage the High Water Recording Company was created as a division of the University of Memphis. One of its first artists was Hemphill. That first recording featured the Hemphill original compositions, "Jessie's Boogie" and "Standing in My Doorway Crying." The latter became a hit and was the top selling record on the High Water label. Following this success, Evans introduced Hemphill to the French label Vogue Records who promptly signed her to record her first album, She-Wolf.

Shortly following the release of She-Wolf, Vogue Records changed artistic direction and as a result She-Wolf languished with little promotion and no stateside audience. The album wouldn't be released in the United States until the late 1990s. The inertia of She-Wolf couldn't stop Hemphill and she kept right on playing, writing music, and developing her distinct, hypnotic sound. London's The Independent described Hemphill as a "powerful and mesmerizing performer who is like a female version of John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf combined." The blues establishment also took notice and Hemphill won the esteemed W.C. Handy Award for Traditional Female Artist of the Year in both 1987 and 1988.

In 1990 her second album, Feelin' Good, was released on Evans's High Water label. With this album Hemphill drew the attention of blues aficionados from around the globe. One reviewer wrote on the Harmony Ridge Music website, "She's haunting, sexy, and full of the raw energy only someone with the blues in their blood can be." The album also earned Hemphill another Handy award in 1991 for Acoustic Album of the Year. Hemphill penned most of the songs on Feelin' Good. Drawing from traditional blues topics of love lost and found, poverty and hard work, sex and salvation, Hemphill continued a tradition of singing for and of the people. She told Guitar Player, "[The songs] don't be all from me … It be what I think other-folks is feeling—the trouble that other womens is having. All us women have the same kind of trouble with our guys. Some of my blues is kinda sad blues, 'cause sometimes I be feeling down and out, and I know some other womens do too. So I play them so it will hit somebody."

At a Glance …

Born Jessie Mae Hemphill on October 18, 1923 (some sources cite 1932, 1934, or 1937), in Senatobia, MS; died on July 22, 2006, in Memphis, TN; daughter of Virgie Lee Graham and James Graham, a blues pianist; married J.D. Brooks (divorced).

Career: Various blues bands and drum-and-fife groups, MS, guest player, 1950s–60s; singer, songwriter, guitarist, percussionist, 1970s–2005.

Awards: W.C. Handy Award, for Traditional Female Artist of the Year, 1987, 1988; W.C. Handy Award Acoustic Album of the Year, for Feelin' Good, 1991.

Career Peaked

Hemphill's fame reached its peak in the early 1990s. She was in demand at blues festivals and concerts all over the United States and Europe. As the general public lapped up her music, it also stirred the interest of academic folklorists. Hemphill performed for folklore societies in Memphis and Washington D.C. "Jessie Mae's strongest musical influences come from her family and the local folk music tradition near her home in Como, Mississippi," wrote Evans. Those traditions include the fife-and-drum of which Hemphill told www.mississippitalking.com, "[It was] my granddaddy's music, it came from Africa. My granddaddy knew it, and his daddy knew it too." Even with her hectic schedule, Hemphill managed to find time to perform with fife-and-drum groups back home in Mississippi.

As her fame was spreading, so was her reputation as a real "She-Wolf" of the blues. On stage Hemphill nurtured a sexuality normally reserved for male singers. She wore sequins and low cut tops, and flirted with the audience. Photographer Bill Steber, who has photographed many traditional blues musicians, wrote on his website: "Female blues guitarists of Hemphill's generation are rare because of the social strictures and danger associated with the lifestyle. Jessie Mae, however, has always known how to take care of herself in a hostile world. 'My mother carried her gun all the time,' says Hemphill. 'She was a pistol-packing mama so I'm a pistol-packing mama.'"

However, a debilitating stroke in 1993 left her partially paralyzed, making it impossible for her to play guitar again. Though her career effectively came to a halt, her fame continued to grow. In 1997 Feelin' Good was revamped and reissued on CD by the HighTone Records label. A year later, She-Wolf was finally released in the United States, also on HighTone Records. The releases once-again stirred the interests of blues lovers and scholars, making Hemphill something of a cult icon in the blues community.

Continued to Play Music

In November of 2001 she sang and played tambourine as part of the The North Mississippi Hill Country concert in Brooklyn Heights, New York, that brought her together with other homegrown Mississippi talent, including legends Othar Turner and T-Model Ford, as well as more famous newcomers Lucinda Williams, the North Mississippi All-Stars, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Acclaimed German filmmaker Wim Wenders filmed the concert for The Blues, a PBS series that was televised in 2003. Her last album released in 2004. Dare You to Do It Again was recorded in the same potato barn in Como, Mississippi, that Hemphill's grandfather had once played. Joined by a host of musicians, Hemphill sang and played tambourine. Sing Out! reviewer Gary Von Tersch praised Hemphill's performance, saying "her idiosyncratic, utterly raw vocal approach still amazes."

Despite her continuing fame and ever-growing audience, Hemphill's later life was a struggle. This daughter of the North Mississippi Delta blues, homegrown fourth generation blues musician, innovator and tradition saver, lived alone for many years in a ramshackle trailer in Como, Mississippi with her pet poodle Sweetpea. However, organizations such as the Sunflower River Blues Association of Clarksdale, Mississippi, whose aim is to assist blues pioneers who have fallen on hard times, helped Hemphill find better housing.

Cultural historians also worked to document Hemphill's musical legacy. Students in Mississippi wrote about her life as part of The Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project, which shares the rich cultural tradition of Mississippi with high school students. And she spoke to students as part of the Blues Project of George Mason University in the late 1990s and early 2000s. One student wrote on the Blues Project Web site of a 2000 visit: "When we met Jessie Mae Hemphill … she seemed to have a great perspective on how the music brought the community together for celebration and to share their lives with each other … As we sat and listened to her I felt as if we were hearing her own history as a blues woman, but it also told me what life has been like as a whole in the Delta for the past century."

Hemphill further encouraged the preservation of her musical heritage by lending her name to the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation, which served as an archive and promoter of North Mississippi music. Olga Wilhelmine Mathus, founder and president of the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation, noted in the Clarksdale Register that Hemphill enjoyed the idea of passing on her traditions, and Mathus emphasized the importance of honoring Hemphill. "She was a pioneer," Mathus said. "She had a lot of guts …" and "was inspirational for musicians in general and inspired many prominent bands, especially women." Hemphill died in poverty on July 22, 2006, in Memphis, Tennessee, but her musical legacy lives on through her recordings and the continued work of the JMH Foundation.

Selected discography

Albums

She-Wolf, Vogue/Blues Today, 1980.

Feelin' Good, High Water, 1990.

Dare You to Do It Again, 219 Records, 2004.

Albums with others

Giants of Country Blues, Vol. 3, Wolf, 1991.

Deep South Blues, HighTone/HMG, 1999.

Mali To Memphis: An African-American Odyssey, Putumayo World Music, 1999.

Sources

 www.xpn.org/bluesfile_podcast/bluesfile_podcast072706.mp3 (November 14, 2006).

"Blues Musician Jessie Mae Hemphill Dies," Blues News, www.blues.co.nz/news/article.php?id=586 (November 14, 2006).

"The Blues Project," New Century College, George Mason University, www.ncc.gmu.edu/CFS/bluesproject.htm (1998).

"Jessie Mae Hemphill," Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation, www.jmhemphill.org/bio.html (November 14, 2006).

"Jessie Mae Hemphill Dies in Memphis," Clarksdale Register, www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2038&dept_id=230617&newsid=16980098&PAG=461&rfi=9 (November 14, 2006).

"Jessie Mae Hemphill: Feelin' Good," Pop Matters, www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/h/hemphill-jessiemae-feelin.shtml (November 14, 2006).

Harmony Ridge Music, www.hrmusic.com/discos/fafram17.html (1998).

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"Hemphill, Jessie Mae." Contemporary Black Biography. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 18 Dec. 2015 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

                     

                                          

                                               

Jessie Mae Hemphill (October 18, 1923 -- July 22, 2006) was a pioneering electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the primal, northern Mississippi country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage. She was born near Como and Senatobia, Mississippi, in northern Mississippi just east of the Mississippi Delta.