She-Wolf

Jessie Mae Hemphill - You Can Talk About Me
Jessie Mae Hemphill - Standing In My Doorway Crying
Jessie Mae Hemphill - Take Me Home With You, Baby
Jessie Mae Hemphill - Lord, Help The Poor And Needy
She Wolf - I'm So Glad You Don't Know What's On My Mind

I've wanted to do a Jessie Mae Hemphill post for a long time, so while I was in Australia and had access to my collection, her CDs were amongst the first I reached for. Her great-grandfather, grandfather, father, mother and aunties where all musicians playing fiddles, fifes, pianos, guitars and drums, so unsurprisingly Jessie Mae's musical education began early. Though primarily a guitarist and singer, Jessie Mae, like many of her family, was a multi-instrumentalist. Her first gigs were playing bass and snare drums in a fife-and-drum band, perhaps her grandfather's -- Sid Hemphill was recorded by the Lomax's in the 1940s and 50s. The deep fife-and-drum band rhythms permeate through Jessie Mae's guitar playing, in a style which could be described as hill country trance blues. It's similar to the methods employed by Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and Fred McDowell, who all lived in areas of Mississippi near to Jessie Mae and all knew each other. Sometime on July 22, 2006, Jessie Mae joined them on stage at that big Juke Joint in the sky.

The first track posted 'You Can Talk About Me' is a live recording made at Junior Kimbrough's Juke Joint in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1991. It's taken from the soundtrack to the excellent documentary 'Deep Blues' named after the equally terrific book by musicologist Robert Palmer. What a smoking performance. This type of hypnotic music is best captured live and lo-fi complete with background chatter, hoops and hollers. Also, I vaguely remember reading or hearing that this recording was made when Jessie Mae was in the midst of a relationship breakdown, which goes someway to explaining her intensity.

From her first album, She-Wolf, recorded around 1980 and originally released on a French label, I've taken the two tunes 'Standing In My Doorway Crying' and 'Take Me Home With You, Baby'. The former is a true blues tale about love lost, a feeling echoed by Bob Dylan on Time out of Mind. The latter, which features Jessie Mae playing a Diddley Bow, is more concerned with love lust.

Jessie Mae's second album, and her first to be released in the US, Feelin' Good, was recorded in 1990. It covers similar territory as She-Wolf and from it comes 'Lord, Help The Poor And Needy', a gospel tunes sung almost acappella with purely a tambourine keeping the beat.

Swamp Surfing In Memphis is the name of a compilation album of local Memphis based rockers that came out in 1986 (on Melbourne's Au Go Go Records). Jessie Mae lived in Memphis for twenty years and her sound fitted in neatly with the rough and rhythmic garage blues of Tav Falco and the like. Under the moniker She Wolf, Jessie Mae contributed two tunes including 'I'm So Glad You Don't Know What's On My Mind'.

Delta Boogie's Jessie Mae Hemphill page