A Voice From Way Back

In 1920, Blues pioneer Lucille Hegamin (sometimes spelled "Hegimin") recorded the songs "Jazz Me Blues" and "Everybody's Blues" on her first record, backed by Harris' Blues and Jazz Seven, on the indie Arto/Bell label. Lucille Hegamin was one of the earliest black blues singers to release a record, following Mamie Smith's release of "Crazy Blues" earlier that same year.

Born Lucille Nelson in 1884, she started singing as a child in church and at local events. As a young woman—about fifteen, in fact—she traveled the south as part of the Laurel Harper Minstrel Stock Company (I've also seen it called the Leonard Harper Review, in various archives.) Then sometime around 1909, she went to Chicago to sing the blues. She worked the vaudeville circuit, and performed in cabarets and nightclubs, for the next several years. By 1914, along the way, she met her future husband, Bill Hegamin, who played piano and led her backup band, the Blue Flame Syncopaters. They ended up in New York, where Lucille was billed as "Harlem's Favourite."

America in 1920 was a very different place than America now. The survivors of the Civil War had watched their sons go to Europe to take part in the War to End All Wars, a war very different than any conflict in history, and a few of those sons even came home again. That same year, Congress passed the 18th Amendment instituting Prohibition, and the 19th Amendment giving American women a constitutional right to vote. Republican Warren G. Harding was elected president. Sinclair Lewis published Main Street, about a sophisticated young woman who went to college and lived in Chicago, but then found herself struggling to cope with the narrow-minded residents of a midwestern American small town. Lewis masterfully illustrated the dynamic of urban progress and modern ideals, versus the more rural traditions and values of the previous century.

Here's an MP3 of "Everybody's Blues" digitized from that original 78 rpm recording:

America was divided, still, and teetering on the brink of modern warfare, industry, and culture. Blues music moved from the rural, post Civil War South into the cities of the North, and the music grew and changed. No longer a lone musician with a guitar or harmonica playing into a corner to mimic the acoustics of a recording studio; Blues went urban. Women were singing and recording, performing on the vaudeville circuit, in nightclubs, cabarets, and with full back-up bands. Pittsburgh station KDKA began regular radio shows in 1920, the first radio station in the country to broadcast on a regular schedule—the leading edge of a wave that wouldn't crest for decades.

This was the America Lucille Hegamin knew. The America where she worked, and sang, and got along as best she could. An America where she most certainly knew people who had been slaves. An America where women had never voted . . . let alone black women. Lucille Hegamin was advertised over the years as the "Blues Singer Supreme," "The Cameo Girl," the "Chicago Cyclone," the "Georgia Peach." She recorded well into the 1930s, and her remarkable career lasted into the early 1960s. She stopped performing after about 1964 because of her failing health. Lucille Hegamin passed away March 1, 1970. She lived to see an amazing future. We have her voice, still.

We're still listening to our own amazing past.