Memphis Minnie sits on
top of the icebox at the 230 Club in Chicago and beats out blues on an electric
guitar. A little dung-colored drummer who chews gum in tempo accompanies her. Midnight.
The electric guitar is very loud, science having magnified all its softness
away. Memphis Minnie sings through a microphone and her voice - hard and strong
anyhow for a little woman’s - is made harder and stronger by scientific sound.
The singing, the electric guitar, and the drums are so hard and so loud,
amplified as they are by General Electric on top of the icebox, that sometimes
the voice, the words, and the melody get lost under their noise, leaving only
the rhythm to come through clear. The rhythm fills the 230 Club with a deep and
dusky heartbeat. Memphis Minnie’s feet in her high-heeled shoes keep time to
the music of her electric guitar. Her thin legs move like musical pistons. She grabs
the microphone and yells, “Hey, now!” Then she hits a few deep chords at
random, leans forward ever so slightly over her guitar, bows her head, and
begins to beat out a good old steady downhome rhythm on the strings - a rhythm
so contagious that often it makes the crowd holler out loud. - Langston Hughes, the Chicago Defender, January
9, 1943
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