you have to be alive to stage a come back

You have to be alive to stage a come back


fiction
edward w pritchard

You have to be alive to stage a comeback. Bertha "Chippie" Hill was a blues singer born in 1905 who performed blues music as early as 1920 and sang later in that decade with Louis Armstrong and others. She retired in the 1930's to raise her seven children. Chippie Hill staged a comeback starting in 1945. World War 2 was over and black musicians would dominate American Music  for the next several decades.

In 1950 Chippie Hill was struck and killed by a hit and run driver in New York City. She never experienced the growth in popularity that blues music would generate in American culture. Bessie Smith had died in 1937 at age 43 from a car accident and Billie Holiday died in 1959 at age 44. Bessie Smith of course is considered along with Billie Holiday as the greatest of the women blues singers. Chippie Hill's voice and presentation compares favorably to Bessie Smith. All three of these women's  music has a deep sorrowful basis that is difficult to duplicate because of changes in American society.

Other women strongly influenced blues music in America as well, notably Ma Rainey who died in  1939 at the age of 52 of natural causes.

As rock music matured in the 1960' several main stream white bands acknowledged the contributions of blues musicians to the American and British music scene. Several Black male blues artists were acknowledged as influences on Rock and Roll music and mainstream artists. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons several of the great Black female blues artist did not  survive into the 1960's and later to benefit economically from the Civil Rights induced benefits for blacks in America and the movement to mainstream music for blues artists in general.

Technology exists to record the music of the vanished female blues artist but they are gone and the suffering and sorrow that nurtured their music is gone as well. Never to return.  Hopefully talented female musicians now living will record the great blues standards while they can and not let the economics of the music business silence their God given gifts.