DI ANNE PRICE
Artist Biography by Linda Seida in allmusic !
Di Anne Price was bringing home a weekly paycheck long before most people even start thinking about getting a job. At the tender age of about four years old, she was playing the piano, first in church and later in more blues-oriented venues. Within a couple of years, she was making money at it and she recorded a tape at the age of nine. The music of vocalists like Sippie Wallace, Memphis Minnie, and Billie Holiday was calling to her even then. A native of Memphis, TN, Price grew up to hold a full-time job as a nursing home's social director, but she always kept a hand in the blues scene, frequently performing at local nightspots with the Uptown All-Stars, her backing band. Price's parents were both very devoted to music. Her father liked to sing and play the guitar, while her mother was a lyricist. Price and her sisters all played the piano. During her childhood, her mother indulged her when it came to her desire to make music on the piano, going so far as to allow the child to leave her bed in the dark of night if she had a desire to tickle the ivories. Mother and daughter stayed up until dawn many times, playing the piano together. If it was winter and the house was cold, Price would play the piano for hours while wearing her gloves, coat, and scarf. Often, her kittens would sing along with her. It was an unconventional parenting style, but one that evidently worked for Price, considering the mark she grew up to make with her music. Price tried to expand her unconventionality into other areas of her life, sometimes with comical results. When she was still a little girl, Price hid her kittens in her pocketbook and smuggled them into church for choir practice. The kittens escaped, rooted themselves to a space under the lectern, and sang their feline hearts out while the minister tried to give his sermon without blowing a gasket. During junior high school, she sang with a group known as the Wildcats. One of her later groups was Captain Phil McGee & the Hottennazz. She is featured on Wild Women, a cassette released in 1996 that features several members of her backing band, drummer Tom Lonardo, and saxophonist Jim Spake, as well as Scott Lane. Rounding out her band are the occasional trumpet of Richard Boyington and the bass of Tim Goodwin.
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After struggling with health problems for many months, Memphis blues artist Di Anne Price died, Wednesday, March 13.
When she was a little girl, Price would wake up in the middle of the night, sit straight up in the bed, and want to play the piano. She’d put on her clothes, including gloves if it was cold, then she’d wake her mom, and the two of them would play and sing until morning. The first song Price ever learned was a blues, and the husky-voiced storyteller never stopped singing them.
Price, who always credited her mom, and called her fans her babies, never lost her enthusiasm. In more recent years, she told a writer for Blues on Stage that the first thing she did in the morning was touch her piano to make sure it was still there. The second thing she did was sit down and practice.
Di Anne Price was easily one of Memphis’s most beloved performers. She played anywhere and everywhere. Her superb albums Wild Women, To Hell With Love, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, and Reekin' With Love, all showcase her smoky vocals, barrelhouse piano, and her fascination with a variety of blues and jazz styles from 1920s throwback to more contemporary arrangements.
In a feature profile, Price told The Flyer she was happiest when she was working. “You know,” she said. “When I’m in a bar, smoke-filled, you can smell the Jack Daniels all around, and I’m singing something that’s right just for the moment, that’s working just for that moment, and people are really listening, that’s everything I need.”
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