Irene Scruggs (born Irene Smith, December 7, 1901 – July 20, 1981)
was an American
Piedmont blues and
country blues
Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...
singer
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
, who was also billed as Chocolate Brown and Dixie Nolan. She recorded songs such as "My Back to the Wall" and "Good Grindin'" and worked with
Clarence Williams,
Joe "King" Oliver
Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881 – April 8/10, 1938) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wr ...
,
Lonnie Johnson,
Little Brother Montgomery
Eurreal Wilford "Little Brother" Montgomery (April 18, 1906 – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communi ...
,
Blind Blake
Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932.
Early life
Little is known of Blake's life. ...
,
Albert Nicholas
Albert Nicholas (May 27, 1900 – September 3, 1973) was an American jazz clarinet player.
Career
Nicholas's primary instrument was the clarinet, which he studied with Lorenzo Tio in his hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Late ...
, and
Kid Ory
Edward "Kid" Ory (December 25, 1886 – January 23, 1973) was an American jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of New Orleans jazz.
He was ...
.
Scruggs achieved some success but today is largely forgotten.
Biography
Born Irene Smith, she originated in rural
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
, but it is believed that she was raised in
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...
.
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and ...
recalled Scruggs being a singer of some standing when Williams traveled to St. Louis in
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
. Scruggs was hired by the revue company, and her career there sometimes outshone her work as a recording artist and
nightclub singer
A nightclub act is a production, usually of nightclub music or comedy, designed for performance at a nightclub, a type of drinking establishment, by a nightclub performer such as a nightclub singer or nightclub dancer, whose performance may ...
. This led to opportunities to sing with a number of
Joe "King" Oliver
Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881 – April 8/10, 1938) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wr ...
's bands, which played in St. Louis in the mid-1920s.
Scruggs was later accompanied by
Blind Blake
Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932.
Early life
Little is known of Blake's life. ...
.
In her live shows her song "Itching Heel" provided the platform for interplay between the Scruggs's singing and Blake's guitar work. "He don't do nothing but play on his old guitar," Scruggs sang, "While I'm busting suds out in the white folks' yard."
She first recorded for
Okeh Records in 1924, with the pianist
Clarence Williams. In 1926 she renewed her working association with Oliver.
Two songs written by Scruggs, "Home Town Blues" and "Sorrow Valley Blues", were recorded by Oliver. She recorded again for Okeh in 1927, this time with
Lonnie Johnson. Scruggs formed her own band in the late 1920s and performed regularly in the St. Louis area.
Using the pseudonym Chocolate Brown she recorded further tracks with Blind Blake. To avoid contractual problems she was also billed as Dixie Nolan.
By the early 1930s,
Little Brother Montgomery
Eurreal Wilford "Little Brother" Montgomery (April 18, 1906 – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communi ...
took over as her accompanist on recordings and in touring.
Scruggs also sang and recorded sexually explicit material. "Good Grindin'" and "Must Get Mine in Front" (1930) were the better-known examples of her
dirty blues
Dirty blues encompasses forms of blues music that deal with socially taboo and obscene subjects, often referring to sexual acts and drug use. Due to the sometimes graphic subject matter, such music was often banned from radio and only available on ...
, and some of her work appeared in ''The Nasty Blues'', published by the
Hal Leonard Corporation
Hal Leonard LLC (formerly Hal Leonard Corporation) is an American music publishing and distribution company founded in Winona, Minnesota, by Harold "Hal" Edstrom, his brother, Everett "Leonard" Edstrom, and fellow musician Roger Busdicker. Curre ...
.
Scruggs recorded only a small batch of songs, and her recording career finished around 1935. In the 1940s, she left the United States for Europe, first settling in Paris and later relocating to Germany. In the 1950s, she undertook a number of
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering th ...
broadcasts.
She died in
Trier
Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...
,
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...
, Germany, in 1981, aged 79.
See also
*
List of country blues musicians
The following is a list of country blues musicians.
A
*Alger "Texas" Alexander (September 12, 1900, Jewett, Texas – April 16, 1954). Singer, a forebear of Texas blues. He did not play a musical instrument but was backed by such artists as ...
*
List of Piedmont blues musicians
The Piedmont blues (also known as Piedmont fingerstyle) is a type of blues music, characterized by a unique fingerpicking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bassline pattern supports a melody using the treble strings. The ...
References
External links
Detailed information about her life and recordings
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scruggs, Irene
1901 births
1981 deaths
American blues singers
American jazz singers
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Songwriters from Mississippi
Piedmont blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Dirty blues musicians
Musicians from St. Louis
20th-century American singers
Classic female blues singers
Songwriters from Missouri
Nightclub performers
Singers from Missouri
20th-century American women singers
Jazz musicians from Mississippi
Jazz musicians from Missouri