Various

...Female Blues Singers - Rarities 1923-1930. The Sub Rosa label presents a collection of works from obscure and forgotten female blues singers, exploring the question: what can be said about a singer whose entire work fits on a single-sided 78rpm record? What circumstances led to this recording? Who decided to do it? For whom was it intended? Why wasn't it followed by more recordings? Hypotheses get lost in places and moments themselves forgotten. What remains are these miraculous voices that have survived, through hardship and death -- these voices that have gone through the dark years of The Great Depression, when profoundly sincere and ferociously ironic blues were at their peak. However, this selection does not constitute a theme-based anthology: it is simply a few little-known or forgotten female blues singers whose ambiguous leanings, double-entendres, and uncompromising crudeness had been censored by the propriety of their times ruled by sanctimonious prudishness and despicable segregation. This collection focuses on the darker, coarser and grittier than what was being performed for the popular crowd in vaudevilles and medicine shows. These women were expressing a radically new form, or perhaps an ancient, primitive one that plumbs the depths of a universal heartache. Featuring Lucille Bogan, Virginia Liston, Lil Johnson, Margaret Johnson, Monette Moore, Margaret Carter, Jenny Pope, Lena Henry, Anna Jones, Rosa Henderson, Coletha Simpson, Martha Copeland, Ivy Smith and Memphis Minnie.