Estelle "Mama" Yancey (January 1, 1896 – April 19, 1986) was an American blues
singer
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...
. She was nominated four times for Blues Music Awards as Traditional Blues Female Artist.
Life and career
Yancey was born Estella Harris in Cairo, Illinois, and grew up in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, where she sang in church choirs and learned to play the guitar. In 1925, when she was 29, she married
Jimmy Yancey
James Edwards Yancey (February 20, c. 1895 – September 17, 1951) was an American boogie-woogie pianist, composer, and lyricist. One reviewer described him as "one of the pioneers of this raucous, rapid-fire, eight-to-the-bar piano style".
Bio ...
, who had traveled in the United States and Europe as a vaudeville dancer. She often sang with him at informal gatherings and house parties in the 1940s and performed with him at Carnegie Hall in 1948. Jimmy Yancey was a
boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since 1870s.Paul, Elliot, ''That Crazy American Music'' (1957), Chapter 10, p. 229. It was eventually extended from pi ...
and blues piano player, and Estelle recorded several times with him. In 1943, the Yanceys recorded for Session Records. They recorded the album ''Pure Blues'' for Atlantic Records in 1951, just a few months before Jimmy Yancey's death that same year.Santelli, Robert (2001). ''The Big Book of Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia''. p. 532.
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.