I WAS HOPING IF SOMEBODY COULD BRING THE PICTURES O UP OF THESE SEXY BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WHO I FEEL DON'T GET A LOT OF ATTENTION,DO U REMEMBER THESE LADIES:

SACHA KEMP

JENNIFER SKY

VANESSA FRACTION

JURNEE SMOLLETT(HOPE I SPELLED HER NAME CORRECTLY)

MILA KUNIS

KIM ALEXSIS

Um, this is not a porn site, two wrong forum and three, Mila gets plenty of shine

Wild Women of Piano

FANNY was a truly pioneering rock band, the first of its kind. Their career broke down the barriers for female musicians in rock. In fact, they were pretty much the original “godmothers of chick-rock”!

FANNY: four young women who were accomplished rock instrumentalists and singers… who never depended only on their sexuality to sell the music… who were self-described as being musicians first and women second. But the fact that they WERE women, and that they reached a level of success previously unheard of for a rock band composed solely of women, was a remarkable achievement.

FANNY was the first all-female rock act to record an entire album for a major record label, and in fact recorded and released five albums for major labels. FANNY was the first all-female rock act to rise to real prominence in the US and Europe. Acknowledged by both the press and their many fans as an awesome live act – in the words of Steve Peacock, a top UK music journalist of the era, “if you close your eyes, it’s like listening to the Stones” – FANNY toured tirelessly for up to nine months of every year. In a career that stretched from 1970 to 1975, they had a string of hit singles and also played on the studio recordings of some legendary artists. In addition to their many live gigs, they performed on top music and variety television shows of the time, including The Old Grey Whistle Test, the Sonny and Cher Show, American Bandstand and The Beat Club, Germany’s most famous band program.

The four original members of FANNY were June Millington (guitar, vocals), Jean Millington (bass, vocals), Alice de Buhr (drums, vocals), and Nickey Barclay (keyboards, vocals). June and Nickey were the primary songwriters for the band, but Jean and Alice made significant contributions to FANNY’s repertoire and all four participated in arranging the songs and crafting their stage performances. Some of the biggest music stars of the time, from David Bowie to Deep Purple to George Harrison to the Kinks, were so blown away by these four teenaged rockers that they went out of their way to promote the band and to book them as an opening act.

Despite their success, FANNY were never quite superstars, but they prepared the way for women in rock. When they started out, the idea of young women as rock players was as unthinkable as the idea of women having the vote had been to earlier generations. Recently, FANNY was finally honoured by receiving the ROCKRGRL WOMEN OF VALOR award for their vital achievement, and feted at Berklee College of Music on April 20, 2007 with a gala evening including testimonials and a “rockestra” of Berklee students playing FANNY’s songs.

FANNY: a legend whose legacy lives on in the women rock musicians of today.

http://fannyrocks.com

1950 news bio about Marian Anderson

2008 interview with Sonja Kristina, the lead singer of the 1970's prog rock band Curved Air, which also had future Police drummer Stewart Copeland as a member.

fred12 said:

I WAS HOPING IF SOMEBODY COULD BRING THE PICTURES O UP OF THESE SEXY BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WHO I FEEL DON'T GET A LOT OF ATTENTION,DO U REMEMBER THESE LADIES:

SACHA KEMP

JENNIFER SKY

VANESSA FRACTION

JURNEE SMOLLETT(HOPE I SPELLED HER NAME CORRECTLY)

MILA KUNIS

KIM ALEXSIS

you tried google? type their names in, there's a whole image section and everything. It's pretty amazing.

Samantha Bumgarner -- fid... mountains

Aunt Samantha Bumgarner (née Biddix) was a fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina who, in 1924, became the first woman to record hillbilly music. In doing so, she opened the doors for all the great female hillbilly and country musicians who followed. Imagine for a second a world without Brenda Lee, Iris Dement, Jean Shepard, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Norma Jean, Skeeter Davis, Sue Thompson and Tammy Wynette, to name a few. Not a pretty place.

Samantha Biddix was born in Dillsboro, North Carolina on Halloween, 1878, the same year Black Bart held up his last stagecoach and, more relevantly, Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. Her parents were Has Biddix, himself a fiddler, and Sara MaLynda Brown Biddix. Though Biddix showed an early interest in music, her father wouldn’t allow her to touch the fiddle, an instrument occasionally referred to by hillbillies as a “devil’s box.” Nonetheless, when he wasn’t around, she played it and displayed a natural talent. The banjo, then viewed as a slightly more acceptable instrument for women, was not forbidden and Biddix’s first, constructed from gourd and cat hide, was presented to her at fifteen. Later, having demonstrated her skills for her father, he bought her a ten cent model and allowed her to perform with him in the area. Ultimately, he consented to her entering a banjo competition in Canton and she won. Gaining confidence, she began entering and winning competitions routinely.

When she married Carse Bumgarner in 1902, he gave her her first fiddle but she remained most acclaimed for her banjo playing. A few years later she acquired the nickname "Aunt Samantha." Although through the lens of modern ignorance, a hillbilly woman gaining fame with the banjo may seem completely out of the ordinary, it was actually fairly common for women to play the instrument, especially amongst hillbillies. In 1916, when Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles began field recording in the upper south, nearly three quarters of the hundreds of tunes they compiled as English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians were performed by women. In addition, many famous male hillbillies learned to play from the women in their lives. Ralph Stanley was taught to play by his mother, Lucy Smith Stanley. Cynthia "Cousin Emmy" May Carver taught "Grandpa" Louis Jones. Clarence "Tom" Ashley learned to play from his aunts, Ary and Daisy. Morgan Sexton was schooled by his sister, Hettie. Earl Scruggs was beaten to the banjo by his older sisters, Eula Mae and Ruby.

By the early 20^th century, whilst still not completely respectable, several female musicians gained a measure of popularity playing banjo, including Elizabeth "Babe" Reid, Gertrude Evans, Virginia “Aunt Jennie” Myrtle Wilson, Stella Wagoner Kimble, Pearl Wagoner, Ada Lee Stump Boarman and Julia Reece Green. By the 1920s, a veritable banjo craze swept the nation and the most popular brand was the Whyte Ladie. In some respects, Bumgarner was merely part of a tradition involving hundreds of women before her, but as an especially talented musician who usually bested her mostly male competitors, her fame spread in the recording age in a way her predecessors never could. In 1924, she was contacted by Columbia, hoping to capture her talents on shellac.

In April 1924, accompanied by guitarist Eva Smathers Davis of nearby Sylva, Bumgarner traveled to New York City where, on the 23, she and Davis recorded ten songs both together and solo. According to County Music Magazine, that record was also the first release by female musicians in the hillbilly genre. They were also the first recordings of a five-string banjo. Although today the Cashville country scene has little use for anything but this week’s disposable pap, The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum there does feature the 78s of her initial recordings, which were:

Big-eyed Rabbit (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis)

Cindy in the Meadows (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis)

Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss (Samantha Bumgarner)

The Gamblin' Man (Samantha Bumgarner)

Georgia Blues (Samantha Bumgarner)

I Am My Mother's Darlin' Child (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis)

John Hardy (Eva Davis)

Shout Lou (Samantha Bumgarner)

Wild Bill Jones (Eva Davis)

Worried Blues (Samantha Bumgarner)

Aunt Samantha seemed reluctant to pursue her music professionally, although others encouraged her to. Instead, she contented herself with teaching younger musicians, including Harry Cagle, who later formed Harry Cagle and the Country Cousins. When famed quack "Dr." John Brinkley, the so-called "Goat Gland King" (he used goat glands to treat impotency) asked her to allow him to take her to Del Rio, Texas to play on radio station, XERA, she only consented on the condition that Cagle accompany her.

In 1928, she was invited by local banjo-playing lawyer Bascom Lamar Lunsford to play at his first Asheville Mountain Song and Dance Festival. She did, and continued doing so every year until 1959, even though suffering from rheumatism and arthritic hands in later years. In 1936, at one such performance, Pete Seeger was in the audience and word of mouth about her spread amongst the folk revivalist scene. Soon she was playing Chicago, Kansas City, New York, St. Louis and DC, where she performed for the enjoyment of Franklin Roosevelt. She ultimately recorded again as well, for a company in Liverpool.

Bumgarner and her husband moved to Lovefield at some point. They never had any children and he died in 1941. Just one year after retiring from public performance, Samantha Bumgarner died of arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 82 on Christmas Eve, 1960. She’s buried in Dillsboro's Franklin Cemetery.

Although Bumgarner herself seemed content to record rarely and stay in the hills, by the ‘30s, several Kentuckyian women, including Cynthia "Cousin Emmy" May Carver, Lily May Ledford and Laverne "Molly O’Day" Williamson – perhaps encouraged by the possibilities offered to Bumgarner – all used banjo-playing to take them away from the hardscrabble lives in the tobacco fields, hills and hollers of Bluegrass Country to professional careers as musicians, the first of many women to follow a path made possible through a by all accounts humble Aunt Samantha.

Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss {1924} Big Eyed Rabbit (with Eva Davis) {1924)

scriptgirl said:

Um, this is not a porn site, two wrong forum and three, Mila gets plenty of shine

Um, I know this is not a porn site, not stupid you know!!! You shouldn't be worried about what I put up here anyway!!! I don't think you ever responded to the other topics I have posted..I guess I will just have to check and see huh...if you felt that way, do like everybody else, read and don't respond..thanks

Actress Edna Mae Harris made a name for herself as a lead in underground films of the 1930s and 1940s, which depicted the life of the black bourgeoisie. Harris was born in Harlem, New York, in 1914 to Sam and Mary Harris. Her father was a boxer and customs inspector and her mother worked as a maid for gay 90s pin-up Lillian Russell.

Harris’ family was among the first African American families to migrate to Harlem. They settled near the Lafayette Theater. After the relocation, Harris was encouraged to pursue a career in show business by performers Ethel Waters and Maud Russell who frequently dined at the Harris household. Waters and Russell routinely practiced their acts and coached Harris on perfecting her singing and dancing skills. Harris went on to perform on the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), a vaudeville circuit for African American performers during the 1920s and 1930s.

In the early 1930s, Harris left Harlem to pursue a career in Hollywood and in 1936, made her first film appearance in The Green Pastures as the feisty character Zeba. The Green Pastures was one of the few films produced by a major Hollywood studio in which Harris appeared. Although she maintained a film career during the late 1930s to mid-1940s, her efforts to appear in Hollywood films were futile. After a few additional insignificant roles in Hollywood films, Harris returned to New York and appeared primarily in underground, all-black cast films, such as the Spirit of Youth (1938) as Joe Louis’ love interest, and Lying Lips (1939).

Underground films such as Paradise in Harlem (1940) and Murder on Lenox Avenue (1941) allowed her to showcase her abilities as a nightclub performer. By the late 1940s when the making of all-black cast underground films began to decline, Harris’ film appearances became sporadic. Between filming minor roles, she worked as a dancer at New York’s historical Cotton Club where she performed with her partner, Slim Thomas. Harris was also a vocalist with the Noble Sissle orchestra and Benny Carter band. Edna Harris died in New York in 1997 at the age of 83.

As a record company Olivia produced about 40 albums and sold over a million records. We helped to train local women concert producers and distributors, and thousands of concerts thrived throughout the country bringing the artists and the music to large cities and small towns. The albums often were a lifeline for women who were in the closet in their own town and unable to come out. The stories I have heard over the years are in fact a rich narrative of this transitional moment in women’s history, when women discovered lesbianism and became strong and independent. Olivia was there at the right moment to be the cultural expression of a new generation, indeed, helping to change the world for women.

Olivia Records

Some Olivia Records acts:

Woody Simmons Linda Tillery

BeBe K'Roche Cris Williamson

ESG (Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold)

It certainly wasn't by design that the South Bronx-based group ESG affected post-punk, no wave, hip-hop, and house music. They opened for Public Image Ltd. and A Certain Ratio, they released records on the same label as Liquid Liquid, they had their music sampled countless times, and they became a playlist staple at '70s dance clubs like the Paradise Garage and the Music Box. The group's only aspiration was to play their music -- simplistic in structure and heavy on rhythm -- and sell lots of records. The four Scroggins sisters -- Deborah (bass, vocals), Marie (congas, vocals), Renee (vocals, guitar), and Valerie (drums) -- formed a group with the support of their mother, who bought instruments to keep her daughters busy and away from trouble; at the time, each sibling was teenaged. Basing their sound on a mutual love for James Brown, Motown, and Latin music, the sisters went through a number of name changes before finally settling on ESG.

"E" stood for emerald, Valerie's birthstone; "S" stood for sapphire, Renee's birthstone; and as for "G," well, neither Deborah nor Marie had a birthstone beginning with that letter, but they did want their records to go gold. After permanently adding non-relative Tito Libran to the lineup as a conga player (some male members came and went prior to this), ESG was officially born. The group began by learning and playing songs by the likes of Rufus and the Rolling Stones; they also learned from watching music programs like Don Kirschner's Rock Concert and Soul. The Scroggins' mother had barely scraped up enough cash to buy those instruments, so she didn't have enough left to get them music lessons. The group entered talent contests and even won a few of them. After performing at one particular New York show that they did not win, a judge named Ed Bahlman, the owner of 99 Records (a record shop and a label that included Y Pants, Liquid Liquid, Bush Tetras, and Konk on its roster), was impressed enough to take them under his wing as a manager and producer. At this point, ESG had a few of their own songs. Figuring people would know when they screwed up a cover, the group decided to write their own songs in order to sidestep audience knowledge of when mistakes were being made. Bahlman booked ESG at punk clubs. The group's sparse, heavily rhythmic, and unpolished sound fit right into the New York scene in which Bahlman's label was a significant factor. They debuted in 1979 at a place called the Mechanical Hall. A four-song repertoire was all they had to work with, and after those songs were over, the crowd asked for more. The same four songs were played over again. At another early gig, ESG opened for the Factory label's A Certain Ratio. ESG didn't know A Certain Ratio from A Tramp Shining, but Factory head Tony Wilson asked the openers if they'd like to record something for his label. This resulted in You're No Good, a three-song single produced by Martin Hannett. The songs -- "You're No Good," "UFO," and "Moody" -- remain the group's best-known material. These three songs are among the best to have come from New York's no wave scene, a scene that ESG had little business being part of. ESG wasn't self-consciously arty and they didn't come from a punk background; they simply wrote and played their music without conceptualization. None of this matched with the no wave bands, but the sound the group made certainly did.

The three songs from the Moody 7" were issued in the States on 99 with three live songs from a Hurrah's appearance added. A year later, 99 issued another three-song single in the form of ESG Says Dance to the Beat of Moody. This proved to people too dear to Factory and Hannett that the group had their own sound down and didn't need any outside influence or manipulation. A good debut LP, Come Away with ESG, came in 1983 and continued in the vein of the previous releases. After that, the group went dormant for several years. One major factor was Bahlman's decision to shut down 99. A legal battle with Sugarhill over Grandmaster Flash's sampling of Liquid Liquid's "Optimo" caused him financial and mental stress, with Sugarhill's fall into receivership -- and inability to award 99 their due settlement -- acting as the final straw.

ESG would soon become victims of uncleared samples as well. In fact, there was a period during the early '90s when rap singles using the siren sound from "UFO" seemed more common than ones that sampled James Brown. ESG resurfaced for a number of small-label releases during this period, and a 1993 release was pointedly titled "Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills." Throughout the '90s, ESG's stature as an influential group began to rise, with groups like the Beastie Boys and Luscious Jackson citing them as a profound discovery. The value of the group's rare early releases responded in kind, which was remedied somewhat by the U.K.'s Soul Jazz label. A South Bronx Story, a compilation that included all the group's best material, was released in 2000. The renewed interest helped lead to another resurfacing that culminated in a 2002 album, Step Off, for Soul Jazz. With a revamped lineup that included Renee Scroggins' daughters, Nicole and Chistelle, Step Off was met with the consensus that the group had picked up exactly where it left off. A reissue of Come Away with ESG followed in 2006.

Buffy St. Marie: My Country Tis Of Thy People You're Dying

Wanda Robinson recorded two spoken-word albums:
1971 - Black Ivory (made Billboard`s Black Album chart, reaching #29)
1973 - Me And A Friend (put together from tracks she’d recorded for Black Ivory - Wanda had nothing to do with the release of this work. She had left the music business prior to its release)

Both were released by the label - Perception Records, and feature Wanda reading her work over Jazz-R&B
Her work could be viewed as an important precursor to hip-hop.

In 1972, fed up with being paid very little for her work, she shaved her head, changed her name to Laini Mataka and left the music business.

As Laini Mataka, she has several books of her poetry published:
1988 - Never as Strangers
1994 - Restoring the Queen
2000 - Bein' a Strong Black Woman

Lucille Bogan

Always remembered for some of her very risqué lyrics, blues singer Lucille Bogan, neé Anderson, was born in Monroe County, Mississippi in April 1897. Little is known about her childhood but by 1916 she had moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and had married Nazareth Lee Bogan, a railway fireman. She had a son, also called Nazareth Lee in 1916, and had gained a stepdaughter by her marriage. The aunt of pianist and trumpet-player Thomas "Big Music" Anderson, she was said to have had one of the finest voices of any female blues singer. Although her early work was influenced by vaudeville stylists, with age and experience her voice deepened and her expression matured, and she should certainly be ranked alongside Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Her first recordings, vaudeville songs, were made for OKeh in New York City in 1923, and she was accompanied by pianist Henry C. Callens.

Later in 1923 Lucille recorded a vaudeville-styled song, “Pawn Shop Blues”, also for OKeh but this time in Atlanta, Georgia, when she was backed by Eddie Heywood on piano. This was the first ever recording made outside New York City or Chicago by a black blues singer. In 1927 she went to Chicago to record and her first session for Paramount produced “Sweet Petunia”, an influential song which was later adapted by Vance Dixon with Alex Channey, Blind Blake, Curley Weaver, and others in support. She had a very colorful love life, with both men and women, and it was rumoured that Lucille had an affair with pianist Will Ezell, who had accompanied her for Paramount in a session that also featured Papa Charlie Jackson. As a result of her affair with Ezell, she was involved in divorce proceedings started by her husband, but these were not finalised. In 1928, Lucille recorded for Brunswick, backed by Tampa Red and Cow Cow Davenport. Further influential recordings followed which produced “Sloppy Drunk Blues” and “Alley Boogie”. Among notable artists who recorded versions of the former were Leroy Carr, Bumble Bee Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Jimmy Rogers.

Lucille recorded a final session for Brunswick in 1930, and this produced the highly influential “Black Angel Blues” and “Tricks Ain’t Walkin’ No More”. Whilst Memphis Minnie revived the latter, apart from the obvious derivations of Black Angel Blues, (usually as “Sweet Little Angel”) by artists such as Tampa Red, Robert Nighthawk, B. B. King, Earl Hooker and countless others, Lowell Fulson produced a more subtle reworking as “Love 'n' Things”. Between 1933 and 1935 Lucille Bogan teamed up with pianist Walter Roland, adopting the name Bessie Jackson. The duo recorded for the American Record Company, the releases included her infamous track "Shave 'Em Dry" with its explicit sexual lyrics, (Walter Roland subsequently released a less successful response song, "I'm Gonna Shave You".) In 1935 Lucille moved back to Alabama, still with husband Nazareth, where she managed her son’s jazz band, ‘Bogan’s Birmingham Busters’. However her marriage finally broke up in 1941 and she eventually followed her son to Los Angeles with her then common-law husband. She died in 1948, aged 51, and, possibly as result of impoverishment, was buried in a grave without a headstone.

Blues Trail

Alice Shields

May Singhi Breen (1895 - 1970) 2000 Hall of Fame Inductee May Singhi Breen, affectionately known as "The Ukulele Lady", has long been recognized as one of the outstanding exponents of the ukulele. She convinced music publishers of the commercial value of ukulele arrangements and pioneered the inclusion of arrangements on almost all printed copies of popular music. Her own arrangements appear on more pieces of sheet music than those of any other single person in history. She was also a teacher. She recorded the first ukulele instructional record and she is considered the first to teach the instrument in schools. Her instructional books emphasized the solo capabilities of the ukulele with her slogan "Uke can play the melody".

Headstock from a Martin custom ukulele made for Breen

Personal greeting card from Breen and De Rose, circa 1927

May Singhi Breen was born in New York City in 1895. She received her first ukulele as a Christmas gift, but she didn't know how to play. According to her obituary, she tried to return it to a department store for a bathrobe, but the store wouldn't exchange it so she decided to take lessons. It turned out she was gifted with ukulele playing talent.


She and a few other young women formed an ukulele group, the "Syncopators", who performed on radio. She left the group in 1923 when she met songwriter Peter DeRose, whom she married in 1929. Together they formed a radio show called the "Sweethearts of the Air", which ran for 16 years from 1923-1939. They were wonderful entertainers, and played music over the air with DeRose on piano and Breen on ukulele. She was so popular that P'Mico added an instrument to their ukulele line - the May Singhi Breen autographed model banjo uke.

Logo from Breen's Uke-Trades Publishing Company

Breen's energy and effort in promoting the ukulele contributed greatly to ukulele history and culture. She taught ukulele in private schools as well as in the studio at her "Uke Trades Publishing Company" in New York City.

Advertisement, circa 1924

She formed and gave lessons to many ukulele groups because she believed that the instrument's popularity would become more universal by the formation of clubs, but she also emphasized the ukulele as a solo instrument. Her slogan was "Uke can play the melody". Not only was she the first to teach ukulele in schools, but she was the first to record ukulele instruction, on a 78 rpm Victor label record titled "Ukulele Lesson".


When the question arose in the Musician's Union whether or not the ukulele could be classed as a legitimate musical instrument, Breen's efforts convinced the Union to vote in her favor. She then pursued standardization of the

The 1st recorded ukulele lesson on 78 rpm

ukulele, exemplified by her use of the Universal D Tuning throughout her printed teaching methods and music arrangements. Her published books include song folios with ukulele arrangements from the 1920s and instruction books from the 1950s.

Typical mark found on many
pieces of 1920s era sheet music

Perhaps Breen's greatest contribution to ukulele history was in convincing music publishers of the commercial value of ukulele arrangements. It was through her efforts that ukulele arrangements appear on all printed copies of popular music. In particular, her own arrangements are found on sheet music more than those of any other single person in history.

May Singhi Breen

Was expecting to read about Toni Childs and Tanita Tikaram here...

Ruth Brown, second most famous r&b female artists in the 50s.

Sometimes called queen of r&b... I think she was the first black female artist to sell a million albums, but I'm not completely sure about this...

Michelle Shocked

An awfully authoritative-sounding internet rock guide insists that Michelle Shocked's life must be fiction. But if it seems like an incredible road movie, a tall tale, a legend, it is no mystery. Michelle Shocked set forth on her adventure ever so young but ever so determined to jump past, jump through, jump beyond any boundary that held her back.

The soaking humid Piney Woods swamplands of east Texas at the edge of the border with Louisiana was where she came from; born in Dallas and schooled in Gilmer. Raised in a large, extremely poor, strict fun damentalist Mormon household, her escape consisted of summers spent with her hippie-atheist father. She left home for good at 16. Putting herself through the University of Texas at Austin , with no financial support from her family, she graduated with a degree in Oral Interpretation of Literature. "It was the careerist '80s, and that seemed like the least practical thing I could pursue," recalls Shocked. After graduation, she hit the road, in customary Kerouac fashion. She rambled first to California, playing mandolin and fiddle in street bands, emerging as a staunch political activist first and foremost. Her persona was unadulterated punk rocker with a spiky mohawk and a ring in her nose. She hung out on San Francisco 's hardcore scene with MDC and the Dead Kennedys. Arrested at the 1984 Democratic Convention, a front-page news photo of her struggling with the police would ultimately serve as an album cover. Her mother would eventually commit Shocked to a mental institution against her will. "After 30 days, the insurance money ran out, so I was 'cured' and they released me." Back on the street, dazed by the chemical straightjacket drugs given her by the mental health authorities, half-convinced that she was indeed crazy, she headed for New York City. There she explored the music scene at CBGB's and ate her one big meal of the week at the Cottonwood Café in the West Village.

Caught up in the cycle of homelessness that swept across America in the 1980s, Shocked searched for an alternative. She made her way to Paris , and hitchhiked throughout Europe , busking on the streets of Madrid, surviving on her wits, and a daily ration of alfalfa sprouts. The vagabond lifestyle was far from ideal. At an anti-cruise missile peace camp in Sicily , she was raped by a Green Party comrade. Settling on Amsterdam for the interim, she worked for a pirate radio station and shared a squat with a stranded British reggae band from Birmingham . She was still poor, but she was free.

In 1986 Shocked returned to Texas , to the annual songwriters' gathering at the Kerrville Folk Festival, to volunteer and hang out with her friends, to listen to their new songs and play her own. In those days (and for that matter, still today) Shocked was determined to credit her inspiration from fellow Texas songwriters Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. An Englishman who said he was a journalist heard her one night out among the campfires and asked if she would play her songs for his Sony Walkman. He never got around to mentioning that he was actually a partner in a brand new British independent record label. She played him some songs out there that night, his tape recorder sitting on a log as the crickets sang bucolic background vocals and the trucks downshifted, and she told some stories. She did not know it at the moment, but just like some of her heroes, Leadbelly and Muddy Waters, she was being "field recorded." That tape of her music, made on a Walkman with weak batteries so that it ran far too quickly when played back at normal speed, got played repeatedly on the BBC.

It was a friend who owned a phone that got the call. "Your record is on the charts," was the information the label, Cooking Vinyl had to report. "What record?" Shocked inquired. It had been named "The Texas Campfire Tapes" and it was to be her "debut" recording. Figuring she had nothing much to lose, Shocked saw it as her chance to offer up her two-cents worth. She had grown up in a tradition of bluegrass and blues, of Texas swing and singer-songwriters, and now Michelle Shocked was an authentic British pop phenomenon.

She played her first show, her first show ever, at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. She had planned on activism, not a music career. Over the next eighteen months, Shocked found herself working for a manager who was also her booking agent and who was also her record label owner.

Shocked remembers, "the label was shopping me to major labels, licensing my record around the world, booking gigs, collecting commissions and my royalties, and shipping me and my guitar C.O.D. It was as if I'd fallen into a new job at the circus getting shot out of a cannon." Despite the disarray, she had a plan.

Shocked risked signing with a major label (Mercury) for the sake of attempting to change the system from within. She turned down the label's advance for the sake of owning her work. And she had another plan too. She had organized her songs into a trilogy that was meant to show where she had come from -- not just show the listener, but to also remind herself as well. After her first taste of circus-cannon celebrity, she was leaving something more substantial than breadcrumbs behind her to mark her way back home, a trail of remarkable songs. The first part of her trilogy was called Short Sharp Shocked (1988). She was introduced to producer Pete Anderson, known for his commercial success with Dwight Yoakum. The album they made together became an instant classic, so much so that when they returned to the studio a year later, most everyone presumed they would automatically set forth on Short Sharp Shocked II.

Captain Swing (1989) was a lot of things, but it was not Short Sharp Shocked II. The album took advantage of her Texas roots to pursue her notion that swing was more than just a style that the mere act of music swinging shot past style. Her use of horn arrangements emphasized Michelle Shocked's diverse songwriting skills. Categories now, did not apply. The final phase of her trilogy, named Arkansas Traveler --before she had even recorded Short Sharp Shocked -- had always been meant to be a tribute to the fiddle tunes she had played with her father and brother on mandolins, banjos and such. She pursued the hidden roots of that music and those old familiar tunes. Writing new lyrics, trying out new ways of playing the oldest of tunes, writing new tunes that sounded ancient, she traveled three continents to play with her heroes and her peers and a few rank strangers. Pops Staples, Doc Watson, Gatemouth Brown, Jimmie Driftwood, Taj Mahal, and Allison Krauss were part of the adventure. Recorded on steamboats, in log cabins and even recording studios, Arkansas Traveler (1992) was a triumph, and if even she did not know what was next, she knew she had made her way back home.

Following her instincts, she began exploring gospel traditions while attending an African-American church in Los Angeles , where she was living on a houseboat. Shocked began writing a gospel record. On the day her next recording was to begin, she entered the studio to discover that her label was refusing to issue payment before the session even started. Shocked recounts, "I was taken into a closed-door meeting with the head of business affairs, who informed me that the label was no longer going to promote my music because I cut too good a deal for myself!" Her catalog was continuing to sell steadily; the label wanted the masters back. She left the office and she never went back -- not until the day she arrived to collect what she had owned all along.

Other labels tried to sign her; Mercury sent a cease-and-desist letter that blanketed the industry. They would not let her record and they were not going to release her. She recorded a solo electric record called Kind Hearted Woman and sold it exclusively at her shows in defiance of her label's efforts to stop her. She toured relentlessly, reconfirming her consummate talent as a stage performer. Pioneering an artists' rights paradigm, she sued Mercury using the 13th Amendment, the reform abolishing slavery. They settled the day the trial was to begin and for the first time in years, she was free again. She recorded a new version of Kind Hearted Woman (1996) with her band, releasing it on Private Music/BMG, but this time the contract gave her the option on them.

Three months later, in a classic corporate shake-up, Private Music was folded into a different entity. She exercised her option and was spared the fate of so many artists in recent years, trapped in the consolidation of the recording industry. Michelle Shocked owns Kind Hearted Woman and her entire catalog of music. It is difficult to think of another major label artist who has ever been in her position.

Shocked now spends time between her homes in Los Angeles and New Orleans. Known at her church as "Sister Shocked," she continues to work quietly for non-violence in the environmental and global justice movements. Her current efforts also involve support for "Save Africa's Children," a pan-African vision that addresses the AIDS pandemic on the African continent. She has written a cycle of songs Inspired by the brass band scene in New Orleans. Shocked spent time wandering through Mexico and Guatemala, creating another body of work, which explores her Latin-American heritage.

Additionally, she has collaborated with Fiachna O'Braonain (of Ireland 's Hothouse Flowers) on material that presents their vision for the new millennium. The first result of that collaboration is her latest release Deep Natural. Co-produced by O'Braonain, Deep Natural launched Shocked's own label Mighty Sound (2002) in typically innovative fashion. The release is book-ended with an alternate version of instrumentals entitled Dub Natural. By stripping away her voice and lyrics, Dub Natural emphasizes the rich musicality that has always been part of Shocked's work. Mighty Sound (Ryko Distribution) has planned a full schedule of deluxe reissues of the Michelle Shocked catalog. The label will also be a home for her forthcoming projects, as well as new and developing artists. For some, that would be all the story necessary; for Michelle Shocked , plainly it is just one more step on her journey. Or as she states, "I can't tell you where I'm going . . . but I can tell you where I come from."

http://www.michelleshocked.com

Tanita Tikaram

As an eighteen-year-old, fresh out of school, Tanita Tikaram swept into international prominence during the New Waif era of the late Eighties, and has since pulled out far ahead of the pack with a sound and style completely her own. While her emergence might seem like the quintessential bolt from the blue, in point of fact, Tanita's remarkable musical history stretches back considerably further.

Tanita Tikaram was born in Munster, Germany where her father, an Indian-Fijian British Army officer, was stationed with his Malaysian wife. It was Tanita's mother who gave her daughter that euphonious first name, for no other reason than its melodious sound.

Melody, along with harmony, lyrics and rhythm, were a central part of the Tikaram household from Tanita's childhood on. "My brother would do Elvis impersonations," she recalls, "and I would back him up on the harmonies. I loved The Beatles as well as soul and country music, with all those wonderful tragic tunes and straight-from-the-heart lyrics. I grew up listening to a whole range of women singers in the '70s, from Karen Carpenter and Linda Ronstadt to Rita Coolidge and Crystal Gayle."

The Tikaram family relocated to England when Tanita was twelve, settling in suburban Basingstoke. Her sense of isolation in her new environs drove her further into music and by the time she was sixteen, she was writing her own original songs. Characteristically, her lyrical and compositional influences were eclectic and wide-ranging, from Virginia Woolf and West Side Story to the confessional musings of Joni Mitchell and John Lennon.

Taking a year off before beginning her college studies, Tanita secured a day job selling advertising and used the proceeds to finance a demo tape. It was that tape that fell into the hands of agent and manager Paul Charles, who, after seeing Tanita perform at an open-mike night in a London club, immediately took her under his wing. Literally within weeks, she had landed opening spots supporting the likes of Paul Brady, Warren Zevon and Jonathan Richman. The next step was inevitable: a record company bidding war that ended when the young artist signed to WEA in the UK and Reprise for the U.S. By the summer of that year, 1988, she had released her first single, Good Tradition, an immediate Top Ten hit. Tanita was eighteen years old.

The song was followed by her first album, Ancient Heart, produced by Peter Van Hooke and Rod Argent. It went on to sell four million copies worldwide and launched Tanita's career as a world class performer. Two more albums, The Sweet Keeper (1990) and Everybody's Angel (1991), consolidated her reputation as a singer and songwriter of rare range and resonance.

The 1992 release of Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness -- its title taken from a classic collection of short stories by American author Richard Yates -- was Tanita's first solo production and served as an homage to still more of her favorite artists, including Nina Simone, Phil Spector, The Beatles and Ry Cooder.

After so prolonged a period of creative activity, Tanita took a well-deserved sabbatical over the next two years, but typically for this prolific artist, she used the time to further refine her songwriting skills. And when not putting her own words to her own music, she found herself increasingly in demand as a collaborator, contributing tracks to the Bronte Brothers' album, The Way Through The Woods, and teaming with Christie Hennessy for his album, Lord of Your Eyes. She was commissioned by the BBC to set music to the poetry of Stevie Smith and contributed to the annual Abitare III Tempo exhibition in Italy.

With so busy a schedule, she naturally limited her live appearances to a choice few, including a Nanci Griffiths appearance at the Royal Albert Hall. It was also a period of extensive travel for Tanita, including sojourns in China, France, Romania, Italy and San Francisco. Eventually, she settled in Los Angeles, to begin work on what would become her fifth album, Lovers In The City.

For a woman who had written her second album while touring for the first and who'd taken just a month to write her third, the opportunity to spend nearly two years writing and recording was an entirely new experience. "When I started this album, I had to work hard to recover some of the confidence I'd lost over a period of time. It didn't take long to regain it, and I used that momentum to go on and produce half of the tracks myself. I find that I'm no longer afraid to say what I feel."

Tanita discusses the songs on her latest album Can't Go Back in September 2012

Stacy Q speaks in 2012

Elizete Cardoso

Elizete Moreira Cardoso (often listed as Elizeth Cardoso) (Rio de Janeiro, July 16, 1920 – May 7, 1990), was a singer and actress of great renown in Brazil. She was born in Rio de Janeiro. Her father was a serenader who played guitar, her mother an amateur singer. Elizete began working at an early age and between 1930 and 1935 was a store clerk and hairdresser among other things.

She was discovered by Jacob do Bandolim at her 16th birthday party, to which he was brought by her cousin Pedro, a popular figure among the musicians of the day. Jacó took her to Rádio Guanabara where, in spite of her father’s initial opposition, she appeared on the Programa Suburbano with Vicente Celestino, Araci de Almeida, Moreira da Silva, Noel Rosa and Marília Batista on August 18, 1936. The week after she was hired by the station to appear on a weekly program. Following this, she continued to perform on various shows with multiple radio stations. In the 1960s she had her own radio show.

Due to her low pay, in 1939 she began to perform at clubs, movie theaters and other venues. She met with considerable success and her popularity increased significantly. In 1950, thanks to the support of Ataulfo Alves, she recorded Braços vazios (Acir Alves and Edgard G. Alves) and Mensageiro da saudade (Ataulfo Alves and José Batista), but the album was unsuccessful. Her next recording, also in 1950, met with popular approval. The album included Canção de amor (Chocolate and Elano de Paula), and the samba Complexo (Wilson Batista).

The great success of Canção de amor led her, in 1951, to appear on the first television program in Rio de Janeiro on TV Tupi and helped launch her film career. She appeared in Coração materno, by Gilda de Abreu, and Watson Macedo’s É fogo na roupa. In 1958, Cardoso was invited by Vinicius de Moraes to be the singer of an album of songs written by himself and Tom Jobim. Canção do Amor Demais became the first album of bossa nova music, launching the new genre. The album was released on the Festa label.

Interestingly, while Cardoso was not primarily considered a bossa nova singer, she is the vocalist on the original version of the bossa classic Manhã de Carnaval from the Orfeu Negro soundtrack. Elizete continued to sing and act with great success until her passing. By the end of her life she had released over well over 40 albums in Brazil, Portugal and other countries. During almost seven decades of artistic life, she interpreted many forms of music but her base was always samba, which she performed with great personality, and which earned her nicknames such as: A Noiva do Samba-Canção (the Bride of Samba), Lady do Samba, A Magnifica (the Magnificent One), and the one most connected with her name, A Divina (the Divine One).

Holly Cole Trio: I Can See Clearly Now

International Sweethearts of Rhythm

MickyDolenz said:

*posts about forgotten women*

I love you right now! Gotta come back and check out all these ladies you are posting!