Description
Release Date: 1956 (Original)
Label: Cook/Smithsonian Folkways
Track List
1. Waitin’ For The Robert E. Lee
2. Who’s Sorry Now
3. Mama Don’ Allow It
4. Take Yo’ Finger Off It
5. Bill Bailey
6. Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone
7. Chinatown
8. A Cottage For Sale
9. Ballin The Jack
10. Dyin’ Rag
11. Georgia On My Mind
12. Tishomingo Blues
13. The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise
Notes
“To me I sing love songs—sad songs—torchy songs better. Guess it’s because I had such a hard, sad life from as far back as I can remember is why.” Cryin’ songs and dyin’ songs are the substance of Creole Songbird Lizzy Miles’ musical outpourings. Pianist Red Camp, banjoist Albert French and Tony Almerico’s Parisian Room Band outpour right along with her in this late recording. And so we hear this scintillating blend of outpourings when “Mama don’t allow no clarinet playin’ in here…but Tony don’t care what Mama don’t allow, he’s gonna play that clarinet anyhow.”
Lizzie Miles was a fine classic blues singer from the 1920s who survived to have a full comeback in the 1950s. She started out singing in New Orleans during 1909-1911 with such musicians as King Oliver, Kid Ory, and Bunk Johnson. Miles spent several years touring the South in minstrel shows and playing in theaters. She was in Chicago during 1918-1920 and then moved to New York in 1921, making her recording debut the following year. Her recordings from the 1922-1930 period mostly used lesser-known players, but Louis Metcalf and King Oliver were on two songs apiece and she recorded a pair of duets with Jelly Roll Morton in 1929. Miles sang with A.J. Piron and Sam Wooding, toured Europe during 1924-1925, and was active in New York during 1926-1931. Illness knocked her out of action for a period, but by 1935, she was performing with Paul Barbarin, she sang with Fats Waller in 1938, and recorded a session in 1939. Lizzie Miles spent 1943-1949 outside of music, but in 1950 began a comeback, often performing with Bob Scobey or George Lewis during her final decade.
