Lillie Mae Glover

Lillie Mae Glover. . , Vaudeville blues singer Lillie Mae Glover, often known professionally as Big Memphis Ma Rainey or Baby Ma Rainey, was at the heart of the Memphis blues scene for several decades and recorded one of the earliest releases for Sun Records. , Born the daughter of a preacher in Columbia on Sept. 7, 1906. Lillie Mae (or Little Mary) Hardison soon moved to Nashville with her family. She and three siblings sang in her father's church. At age 14, she left Nashville with a medicine show (a variety show in which vaudeville acts sold cure-all tonics) and traveled to often remote communities throughout the South and Midwest. She also worked on African American vaudeville shows, including F.S. Wolcott's Rabbit's Foot. Co. , Glover claimed to have opened for Ma Rainey (one of the first recorded blues singers, known as the "Mother of the Blues") at the Frolic Theatre in Birmingham around 1925. In addition to singing, Glover worked as a mind-reader and a peddler of voodoo charms, skills she'd acquired on the medicine shows. , In 1928, Glover settles in Memphis and married a cook, Willie Glover. By the time of Ma Rainey's death in 1939, she was calling herself Baby Ma Rainey, Memphis' Beale Street was at the center of African American life and entertainment in the mid-South. Author George W. Lee dubbed it "The Main Street of Negro America." Glover played the clubs and practiced her other skills. In her account, she nurtured up-and-coming artists, including B.B. King and Bobby Bland. , On April 19, 1953, Glover recorded two songs for Sun Records, "Call Me Anything (But Call Me)" and "Baby, No, No!" It became the ninth single on Sun, predating Elvis Presley's debut by 14 months. Those were the only recordings that she made until the 1970s. Her bold, declamatory style had its roots in the pre-amplification era when singers needed to be heard above their bands. , As an urban renewal program razed the area around Beale Street, the scene declined. Glover began playing for predominately white audiences at the Cotton Club in West Memphis, eventually focusing on extra-musical activities. , In the mid-1970s, blues scholar and entrepreneur Steve LaVere booked Glover onto the Memphis Blues Caravan, and Memphis blues-jazz aficionado Harry Godwin began booking her locally. She made regular appearances at Blues Alley on Front Street, interspersing her songs with stories. , From the late 1970s on, Glover was beset by health issues but continued performing. She made some recordings with local bandleader Prince Gabe and worked until a couple of years before her death in Iuka, Miss., on March 27, 1985. Her passing was more widely reported than anything she'd done in life, and she was fated posthumously with a two-block parade from the junction of Beale Street and South Fourth Street to Handy Park. , News agency UPI reported that Glover would be buried near Memphis' former mayor, Boss Crump, and that her gravestone would bear the words, "I don't care what Mr. Crump don't allow, I'm gonna barrelhouse anyhow." She was indeed buried in the same cemetery as Crump, but her grave marker reads, "I'm 76 years old. Ain't never had enough of nothing, and it's too damn late now."