Sippie Wallace born November 1, 1898

Sippie Wallace (November 1, 1898 – November 1, 1986) was an American singer, pianist, songwriter and one of the a major blues artists of the 1920s, whose renown as a performer carried well into the 1980s. Her early career in tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale".

Wallace was born Beulah Belle Thomas in the Delta lowlands of Jefferson County, Arkansas, the fourth of 13 children in her family. Wallace came from a musical family: her brother George Washington Thomas became a notable pianist, bandleader, composer, and music publisher; a brother Hersal Thomas, was a pianist and composer; her niece Hociel Thomas (George's daughter) was a pianist and composer. When she was a child her family moved to Houston, Texas. She was nicknamed "Sippie" because, as she states, "my teeth were so far apart and I had to sip everything." In her youth she sang and played the piano in Shiloh Baptist Church, where her father was a deacon, but in the evenings she and her siblings took to sneaking out to tent shows. By the time she was in her mid-teens, Wallace learned blues and ragtime music in the shows, in addition to performing in chorus lines and acting in comedy skits. These experiences influenced her contributions as a blues artist.

In 1915, Wallace moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, with Hersal. Two years later she married Matt Wallace and took his surname. Wallace followed her brothers to Chicago in 1923 and worked her way into the city's bustling jazz scene. Her reputation led to a recording contract with Okeh Records in 1923. Her first recorded songs, "Shorty George" and "Up the Country Blues", the former written with her brother George, sold well enough to make her a blues star in the early 1920s. Other successful recordings followed, including "Special Delivery Blues" (with Louis Armstrong), "Bedroom Blues" (written by George and Hersal Thomas), and "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman". Hersal Thomas died of food poisoning in 1926, at age 19. In 1929 Wallace settled in Detroit, where she would live for the rest of her life.

                                    

Matt Wallace died in 1936 and George Thomas Washington died on March 6, 1937. With neither the experience nor the guidance from her brother to guide her in refocusing her career, Wallace was unable to adapt her style to changing tastes, and by 1932 she had slipped into the same obscurity as other female blues artists of her era.

Aside from an occasional performance or recording date, she did little in the blues until she launched a comeback in 1966, after her long-time friend Victoria Spivey coaxed her out of retirement, and Wallace toured on the folk and blues festival circuit. Wallace recorded an album, Women Be Wise, on October 31, 1966, in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery playing the piano. She recorded another album in 1966, Sippie Wallce Sings the Blues, on which she accompanied herself on piano on the title song, with Sykes or Montgomery playing piano on other tracks. Both albums include her signature song, "Women Be Wise". These recordings helped inspire the musician Bonnie Raitt to take up singing and playing the blues in the late 1960s. Raitt recorded renditions of "Women Be Wise" and "Mighty Tight Woman" on her self-titled debut album in 1971. 

Wallace contributed to Louis Armstrong's album Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers (1966), singing "A Jealous Woman Like Me", "Special Delivery Blues", "Jack o'Diamond Blues", "The Mail Train Blues" and "I Feel Good". She and Spivey recorded an album of blues standards, Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey, released in 1970 by Spivey's label, Spivey Records. In 1981, Wallace recorded the album Sippie for Atlantic Records, which earned her a 1983 Grammy nomination and won the 1982 W. C. Handy Award for Best Blues Album of the Year. Wallace's backup group was pianist James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band, consisting of Paul Klinger on cornet, Bob Smith on trombone and Russ Whitman and Peter Ferran on reeds.

She appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 and 1967, toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival in 1966, performed at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1967. In the 1970s Wallace's performances were curtailed due to failing health. She suffered a stroke in 1970 that left her temporarily wheelchair-bound and forced her to end her stint as organist of the Leland Baptist Church, but recovered sufficiently to perform at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1972, Wallace toured and recorded with Raitt in the 1970s and 1980s and continued to perform on her own. The duo performed the song "Woman Be Wise" on Late Night with David Letterman on April 27, 1982, with Dr. John accompanying on piano, in support of her album "Sippie". With backing vocals by Raitt, the album was nominated for a 1983 Grammy award for best traditional blues and earned the W.C. Handy Award for best blues album of 1983 the following year. She shared the stage with B.B. King at the Montreaux Jazz Festival on July 22, 1982, in a performance that was filmed and later broadcast.

Sippie with Bonnie Rait

In 1983-84 she traveled to Germany to tour, returning to that country again in the spring of 1986. Despite her failing health, her concerts were highly acclaimed. Fortunately for her fans, many of these performances were recorded with the German boogie-woogie pianist Axel Zwingenberger which would become Wallace's lasting legacy to the blues. In March 1986, following a concert at the Burghausen Jazz Festival in Germany, Wallace suffered a severe stroke and was hospitalized. She returned to the United States and died in the Sinai Hospital in Detroit on November 1, 1986, her 88th birthday.

She was buried at Trinity Cemetery, in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. In 1993 she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.

(Edited from Wikipedia, All About Jazz & Encyclopedia.com)