(Blues) Sippie Wallace - Women Be Wise - 1966 (1992), MP3, 320 kbps

Biography
by Cub Koda
A classic female blues singer from the '20s, Wallace kept performing and recording until her death. She was a major influence on a young Bonnie Raitt, who recorded several of Wallace's songs and performed live with her.
The daughter of a Baptist deacon, Sippie Wallace (born Beulah Thomas) was born and raised in Houston. As a child, she sang and played piano in church. Before she was in her teens, she began performing with her brother, pianist Hersal Thomas. By the time she was in her midteens, she had left Houston to pursue a musical career, singing in a number of tent shows and earning a dedicated fan base. In 1915, she moved to New Orleans with Hersal. Two years later, she married Matt Wallace.
In 1923, Sippie, Hersal, and their older brother George moved to Chicago, where Sippie became part of the city's jazz scene. By the end of the year, she had earned a contract with OKeh Records. Her first two songs for the label, "Shorty George" and "Up the Country Blues," were hits, and Sippie soon became a star. Throughout the '20s, she produced a series of singles that were nearly all hits. Wallace's OKeh recordings featured a number of celebrated jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Eddie Heywood, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams; both Hersal and George Thomas performed on Sippie's records as well, in addition to supporting her at concerts. Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for OKeh. Many of the songs that were Wallace originals or co-written by Sippie and her brothers.
In 1926, Hersal Thomas died of food poisoning, but Sippie Wallace continued to perform and record. Within a few years, however, she stopped performing regularly. After her contract with OKeh was finished in the late '20s, she moved to Detroit in 1929. In the early '30s, Wallace stopped recording, only performing the occasional gig. In 1936, both George Thomas and her husband Matt died. Following their deaths, Sippie joined the Leland Baptist Church in Detroit, where she was an organist and vocalist; she stayed with the church for the next 40 years.
Between 1936 and 1966, Wallace was inactive on the blues scene -- she only performed a handful of concerts and cut a few records. In 1966, she was lured out of retirement by her friend Victoria Spivey, who convinced Sippie to join the thriving blues and folk festival circuit. Wallace not only joined the circuit, she began recording again. Her first new album was a collection of duets with Spivey, appropriately titled Sippie Wallace & Victoria Spivey, which was recorded in 1966; the album wasn't released until 1970. Also in 1966, Wallace recorded Sippie Wallace Sings the Blues for Storyville, which featured support from musicians like Little Brother Montgomery and Roosevelt Sykes. The album was quite popular, as were Sippie's festival performances.
In 1970, Sippie Wallace suffered a stroke, but she was able to continue recording and performing, although not as frequently as she had before. In 1982, Bonnie Raitt -- who had long claimed Sippie as a major influence -- helped Wallace land a contract with Atlantic Records. Raitt produced the resulting album, Sippie, which was released in 1983. Sippie won the W.C. Handy Award for best blues album of the year and was nominated for a Grammy. The album turned out to be Sippie Wallace's last recording -- she died in 1986, when she was 88 years old.

Sippie Wallace (born as Beulah Thomas, November 1, 1898 – November 1, 1986) was an American singer-songwriter. Her early career in local tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by herself or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas.Her accompanists included Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams. Among the top female blues vocalists of her era, Wallace ranked with Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and Bessie Smith.
In the 1930s, she left show business to become a church organist, singer, and choir director in Detroit, and performed secular music only sporadically until the 1960s, when she resumed her career. Wallace was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1982, and was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.
Wallace was born in Houston, Texas, one of 13 children.In her youth Wallace sang and played the piano in Shiloh Baptist Church, where her father was a deacon, but in the evenings the children took to sneaking out to tent shows. By her mid-teens, they were playing in those tent shows. By performing in the various Texas shows, she built a solid following as a spirited blues singer.[citation needed]
Wallace came from a musical family: her brother George W. Thomas became a notable pianist, bandleader, composer, and music publisher; her other brother Hersal Thomas was a pianist and composer; and her niece (George's daughter) Hociel Thomas was a pianist and composer
After following her brothers to Chicago in 1923, Wallace worked her way into the city's bustling jazz scene. Her reputation led to a recording contract with Okeh Records in 1923. Wallace's first recorded songs, "Shorty George" and "Up the Country Blues", the former written with her brother George, sold well enough to make Wallace a blues star in the early 1920s. Other successful recordings followed, including "Special Delivery Blues" (with Louis Armstrong), "Bedroom Blues" (written by George and Hersal Thomas), and "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman". Her younger brother Hersal died of food poisoning in 1926 at age 16.
Wallace moved to Detroit in 1929. Her husband Matt and brother George both died in 1936. Wallace for some 40 years was a singer and organ player at the Leland Baptist Church in Detroit. Mercury Records reissued "Bedroom Blues" in 1945. Aside from an occasional performance or recording date, Wallace did little in the blues until she launched a comeback in 1966 after her longtime friend Victoria Spivey coaxed her out of retirement and on the folk and blues festival circuit.
In 1966 Wallace recorded an album on Halloween night, Copenhagen, Denmark, Women Be Wise, with Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery sharing the piano stool. Another 1966 album Sings the Blues, on the latter song, Wallace accompanied herself on piano; otherwise she is backed by either Roosevelt Sykes or Little Brother Montgomery on piano. Includes Wallace's signature song, "Women Be Wise", "Don't Advertise Your Man". The album helped inspire blues-pop singer Bonnie Raitt to take up the blues in the late 1960. In 1971 Raitt recorded a rendition of Sippie Wallace's "Women Be Wise" on her self-titled album Bonnie Raitt. Wallace toured and recorded with Raitt in the 1970s and 1980s, while continuing to perform on her own. The bond between Wallace and Raitt helped bridge the gap between two generations of blues queens.
Wallace recorded on Louis Armstrong album, Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers (1966), singing "A Jealous Woman Like Me", "Special Delivery Blues", "Jack O'Diamond Blues", "The Mail Train Blues" and "I Feel Good". Wallace also recorded an album of old blues standards with her friend Victoria Spivey, called Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey, which came out in 1970 on Spivey's own self-named label. In 1981, Wallace recorded an album Sippie for Atlantic Records, which earned a her a 1983 Grammy nomination,[8] and also won the 1982 W. C. Handy Award for Best Blues Album of the Year. Wallace's backup group on were pianist Jim Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band, consisting of cornetist Paul Klinger, trombonist Bob Smith and Russ Whitman and Peter Ferran on reeds.
In 1966 and 1967 she appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival, e.g. Copenhagen, Denmark in 1966, the Chicago Blues Festival, 1967, the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, 1972, and appeared at Lincoln Center in New York, 1977. She played herself in the documentary Jammin' with the Blues Greats (1982).
Then in Ann Arbor, Michigan she got together with German boogie woogie pianist Axel Zwingenberger, with whom she recorded a studio album in 1983. Wallace included many of her own groundbreaking compositions as well as other classic blues songs, on his album, And the Friends of Boogie, Vol. 1: Sippie Wallace, released in 1984. In 1984 she traveled to Germany to tour with Zwingenberger, where they also recorded the only complete live album she ever did: An Evening With Sippie Wallace for Vagabond Records.
Death
In March 1986, following a concert in Germany at Burghausen Jazz Festival, she suffered a severe stroke, was hospitalized, returned to the US, and died on her 88th birthday at Sinai Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. She is buried at Trinity Cemetery, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.