Broad Casting
Saffire — The Uppity Blues Women
Alligator Records through Festival
Available on cassette and CD
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
With the Uppity Blues Women's third album, Broadcasting, they again strike a blow against male domination of contemporary blues. While there are few prominent women blues performers these days, and thus fewer blues which reflect the experiences of African American women, women have been integral to the creation and development of the blues.
For the first three decades of this century, the blues were dominated and popularised by great women performers — Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Mamie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, Memphis Minnie and, towering above them all, Bessie Smith. All blues performers who followed — male or female — were deeply influenced by them.
The first vocal blues recording was Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" in 1920. It sold more than 100,000 copies in its first month, opening the eyes of the record companies to the lucrative market for black music. The blues women, in using as accompanists some of the finest jazz musicians of their day — Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Sidney Bechet, Fletcher Henderson among them — also made possible the earliest recordings of jazz.
Saffire — The Uppity Blues Women are vocalist/guitarist Gaye Adegbalola and pianist Ann Rabson. Both are proud to be women and proud to be "middle-aged" (late 40s). They came together as a trio with bassist Earlene Lewis in 1984. Their first self-titled ablum appeared in 1990, their second, Hot Flash, in 1991. Broad Casting is the Uppity Blues Women's first as a duo.
It is the great pioneering blues women, especially Bessie Smith, who inspire the Uppity Blues Women. "Bessie had great style, she was strong and independent in her life, as well as in her music, and in many ways she represented the great black hope for freedom", Adegbalola told Jazziz magazine recently. It is this spirit that pervades Broad Casting and Saffire's earlier albums.
"The fact that we're racially mixed and middle-aged has gotten us a lot of publicity, but ... a lot of our appeal is because we talk about issues that aren't being addressed elsewhere in music", Ann Rabson explained to US folk magazine Sing Out! Saffire sing about relationships, health and life
with a feminist slant. Politics and social commentary are not ignored.
Their songs are more often humorous than polemical. This duo is sharp tongued, assertive, bawdy, angry and funny. They perform a mixture of "old blues gems" and original compositions, propelled by Rabson's no-holds-barred stride piano, smokin' boogie rhythms and death march-slow blues. Adegbalola's no frills guitar and harmonica and powerful voice complete the sound.
"I've heard people say we do some male bashing ... naturally, a woman's perspective comes into play. Some of it comes with age: we're not going to take any shit, we're too old for it. So we don't pull any punches", Rabson says.
An understatement, that. Broad Casting opens with Ida Cox's wonderfully aggressive "One Hour Mama", in which Adegbalola belts out: "I don't want no lame excuses about my lovin' being so good/that you couldn't wait no longer/Now I hope I'm understood/I'm a one hour mama/So no one minute papa/Ain't the kind of man for me."
That track is followed by the self explanatory "Dump That Chump". The advice doesn't stop there. "Don't Treat Your Man Like a Dog", written by Rabson, warns: "If you need protection, if danger's lurking near/Your mutt would give his life for you, you would never need to fear/but if your man is hanging around, your future may be grim/ Statistics show you probably need protection from him/... so if you want a sweetie who will never dog you round/Forget about the the singles bars/You ought to try the pound."
On "OBG Why Me Blues", "Ragtime Rag", and "Shake the Dew Off the Lily", various aspects of women's health and men's attitudes to it are wryly discussed.
The standout track has to be "If It Had Been a Dog ... ", a seething song of protest about the bashing of Rodney King and the treatment of African Americans. Adegbalola's rage engulfs the listener as she sings: "My mama's got scars on her knees/She's praying for my rage to cease/... If it had been a dog they would have gone to jail/But when they kick and beat a coloured man, those madmen go unchained/Justice, drop your blindfold down on the floor."