Estelle "Mama" Yancey (January 1, 1896 – April 19, 1986) was an American
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
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 ...
. She was nominated four times for
Blues Music Award
The Blues Music Awards, formerly known as the W. C. Handy Awards (or "The Handys"), are awards presented by the Blues Foundation, a non-profit organization set up to foster blues heritage. The awards were originally named in honor of W. C. Handy, " ...
s as Traditional Blues Female Artist.
Life and career
Yancey was born Estella Harris in
Cairo, Illinois
Cairo ( ) is the southernmost city in Illinois and the county seat of Alexander County.
The city is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Fort Defiance, a Civil War camp, was built here in 1862 by Union General Ulysses ...
, and grew up in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, where she sang in church choirs and learned to play the guitar. In 1925, when she was 29, she married
Jimmy Yancey
James Edwards Yancey (February 20, c. 1895 – September 17, 1951) was an American boogie-woogie pianist, composer, and lyricist. One reviewer described him as "one of the pioneers of this raucous, rapid-fire, eight-to-the-bar piano style".
Bio ...
, who had traveled in the United States and Europe as a vaudeville dancer. She often sang with him at informal gatherings and house parties in the 1940s and performed with him at
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
in 1948. Jimmy Yancey was a
boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since 1870s.Paul, Elliot, ''That Crazy American Music'' (1957), Chapter 10, p. 229. It was eventually extended from pian ...
and blues piano player, and Estelle recorded several times with him. In 1943, the Yanceys recorded for Session Records. They recorded the album ''Pure Blues'' for Atlantic Records in 1951, just a few months before Jimmy Yancey's death that same year.Santelli, Robert (2001). ''The Big Book of Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia''. p. 532.
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.