Jackie Richardson (photo by Tim Matheson)
Some people have the right to sing the blues
The blues heal the soul, like snake venom heals a snake bite.
by Nanette Cormier
[Please note: This review is based on a preview performance]
Willie Mae Thornton left Montgomery, Alabama, when she was 15, about a year after her mother died, to join Sammy Green's Georgia-based Hot Harlem Revue. It was 1941. She had a chaperone who travelled with her from city to city in the south. None of the men in the revue drank or took drugs. And of course, none of them were interested in a 15 year old girl.
Oh, all right, it was all true up to the word chaperoned. Willie Mae became a woman while a member of the review which toured from 1941 to 1948. She also earned valuable stage experience.
Nothing good in Willie Mae's life was made to last. In between gigs, she shined shoes, was a drummer/bouncer in an Oakland bar in the 50s, she slept in all night restaurants and bars, in barns, and she picked cotton in Mississippi for awhile; the work was insanely hard.
