Blues Guitarist and Composer. Born Lizzie Douglas, she got her first guitar at age eight and quickly learn to play. When she was thirteen she ran away with Ringling Brothers Circus and traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, where she played in nightclubs under the name Kid Douglas. She teamed up with and married Kansas Joe McCoy and the duo wrote and recorded "When The Levee Breaks", a 1929 tune about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. That song was later released with a few altered lyrics by Led Zeppelin. She would be best remembered by her "Memphis style", and "Bumble Bee" both being huge hits. McCoy's career spanned nearly four decades and in 1980 she was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.
Blues Guitarist and Composer. Born Lizzie Douglas, she got her first guitar at age eight and quickly learn to play. When she was thirteen she ran away with Ringling Brothers Circus and traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, where she played in nightclubs under the name Kid Douglas. She teamed up with and married Kansas Joe McCoy and the duo wrote and recorded "When The Levee Breaks", a 1929 tune about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. That song was later released with a few altered lyrics by Led Zeppelin. She would be best remembered by her "Memphis style", and "Bumble Bee" both being huge hits. McCoy's career spanned nearly four decades and in 1980 she was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.
Bio by: Elizabeth Reed
Inscription
Lizzie "Kid" Douglas Lawlers
AKA
Memphis Minnie
The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie's songs, we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own.
Family Members
Advertisement
See more McCoy memorials in:
Records on Ancestry
Advertisement
