Victoria Spivey born 15 October 1906

Victoria Spivey (October 15, 1906 – October 3, 1976),  was an American blues singer, songwriter, and record company founder. During a recording career that spanned 40 years, from 1926 to the mid-1960s, she worked with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence Williams, Luis Russell, Lonnie Johnson, and Bob Dylan. 

Victoria Regina Spivey (known as Queen, Vicky or Victoria, and Jane Lucas), blues singer and songwriter, daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey, was born in Houston, Texas, she was the daughter of Grant and Addie Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flagman for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. She had three sisters, all three of whom also sang professionally: Leona, Elton "Za Zu", and Addie "Sweet Peas" (or "Sweet Pease") Spivey,  who recorded for several major record labels between 1929 and 1937. She married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd, Billy Adams, and Len Kunstadt, with whom she co-founded Spivey Records in 1961. 

Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston. After he died, the seven-year-old Victoria played on her own at local parties. In 1918, she was hired to accompany films at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. As a teenager, she worked in local bars, nightclubs, and buffet flats, mostly alone, but occasionally with singer-guitarists, including Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1926 she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, "Black Snake Blues" (1926), sold well, and her association with the label continued. She recorded numerous sides for Okeh in New York City until 1929, when she switched to the Victor label. 

                                    

The Depression did not put an end to Spivey's musical career. She found a new outlet for her talent in 1929, when the film director King Vidor cast her to play Missy Rose in his first sound film, Hallelujah! Between 1931 and 1937, more recordings followed for Vocalion Records and Decca Records, and, working out of New York, she maintained an active performance schedule. She recorded or performed withKing Oliver, Charles Avery, Louis Armstrong, Henry Red Allen, Lee Collins, Lonnie Johnson, Memphis Minnie (Minnie Douglas Lawless), Bessie Smith, and Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker). Through the 1930s and 1940s Spivey continued to work in musical films and stage shows, including the hit musical Hellzapoppin (1938), often with her husband, the vaudeville dancer Billy Adams. 

From 1952 to about 1960, she performed only occasionally and largely dropped out of the music scene and settled down at her home in Brooklyn, where she worked as a church administrator and devoted time to her church choir. She returned to secular music in 1961, when she was reunited with an old singing partner, Lonnie Johnson, to appear on four tracks on his Prestige Bluesville album Idle Hours. The folk music revival of the 1960s gave her further opportunities to make a comeback. She recorded again for Prestige Bluesville, sharing an album, Songs We Taught Your Mother, with fellow veterans Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin, and began making personal appearances at festivals and clubs, including the 1963 European tour of the American Folk Blues Festival. 

In 1961, Spivey and the jazz and blues historian Len Kunstadt launched Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues, jazz, and related music, prolifically recording established artists, including Sippie Wallace, Lucille Hegamin, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Turner, Buddy Tate, and Hannah Sylvester, and also newer artists, including Luther Johnson, Brenda Bell, Washboard Doc, Bill Dicey, Robert Ross, Sugar Blue, Paul Oscher, Danny Russo, and Larry Johnson. 

Dylan & Spivey

The 1960s, however, brought a folk and blues revival. With jazz author Len Kunstadt, Spivey started her own label, Spivey Records, in 1961 to produce her own recordings and those of other blues artists. One of her earliest releases was Three Kings and the Queen (1962), which included a young Bob Dylan on blues harmonica and backing vocals. From 1963 to 1966 she contributed articles to Record Research and Sounds and Fury. In 1964, Spivey made her only recording with an all-white band, the Connecticut-based Easy Riders Jazz Band, led by the trombonist Big Bill Bissonnette. It was released first on an LP and later re-released on compact disc. 

In 1970 BMI awarded her the Commendation of Excellence "for long and outstanding contribution to the many worlds of music." Vicky Spivey died at New York on October 3, 1976, , at the age of 69, from an internal hemorrhage  and was buried in Greenfield Cemetery, Hempstead, New York. She was survived by two daughters. She is honored in the Houston Institute for Culture’s Texas Music Hall of Fame. Spivey Records was relaunched in 2007 and offered remastered rare recordings from the label. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & the Texas State Historical Association)