On this blog I will talk about Rock´n´Roll women that I love. From Blues and Rockabilly, to Punk passing through 60s Garage Punk and 70s Glam, this is my tribute to the wonderful women of the Rock´n´Roll underground.
Please note that suggestions are welcome but there is no guarantee that I will publish it as this is a personal project.
Kiwi Martinez is the drummer of the punk band Generación Suicida from South Central L.A. Every member of the band is Latinx, they sing in Spanish and their motto is “musica del barrio, para el barrio” (“music from the neighborhood, for the neighborhood”)
Kiwi Martinez and Tony Abarca, who know each other since they are 12, started the band in 2010. A second guitarist, Mario Quezada, was added in time for their 2013 debut album, Con La Muerte a Tu Lado, and new bassist Elias Jacobo soon followed.
The band was soon booking shows up and down the West Coast, followed by a self-funded European tour in 2013. They have toured in Central and South America, Japan, Canada, and the U.S. East Coast. They also played L.A.’s outdoor Levitt Pavilion with punk veteran Alice Bag, and toured Southeast Asia.
The band has released four albums, four cassette tapes and six 7"s. They've already turned down two or three offers from major record labels because, while they admit that the financial support would be welcome, their priority is to make music on their own terms (though G.S. did license a song for a Levi’s commercial in order to fund a Japanese tour).
Napua Stevens Poire (born Harriet Daisy Kawaiala Kao'ionapuaopi'ilani Stevens; August 31, 1918 – January 7, 1990) was a Hawaiian entertainer, singer, hula dancer, musician, teacher, radio-television personality, event producer and author. She is noted for her hits such as "Beyond The Reef" and "Hawaiian Hospitality" in the late 1940s, in the 1950s.
Stevens was born on August 31, 1918 in Hawi, North Kohala, Hawaii. Her name Napua was a shortened version of her name Kawaiala Kao'ionapuaopi'ilani which means "the perfumed water" and "the finest flower in the bouquet of Pi'ilani. In 1949 she recorded Beyond The Reef on the Bell Records label (like her other hits), written by Canadian Jack Pitman. It was later recorded by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and The Ventures. Other notable hits include "Hawaiian Hospitality", "I Want to Learn to Speak Hawaiian", "Pretty Red Hibiscus", "May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii" and "What Aloha Means".
In 1948 she joined the Aloha Week organization and was responsible for producing and narrating hundreds of hula shows, with performers such as Daddy Bray, Bill Ali'iloa Lincoln, Vickie I'i Rodrigues (her cousin) and others. In the 1950s she hosted her own radio show KTRG and presented her own TV cooking show Napua's Kitchen in the 1960s for eight years.
Dum Dum Girls was an American rock band, formed in 2008. It began as the bedroom recording project of singer and songwriter Dee Dee (née Kristin Gundred). The name is a double homage to the Vaselines' album Dum Dum and the Iggy Pop song "Dum Dum Boys".
The first release under the Dum Dum Girls moniker was a five-song CDR on Zoo Music, in late 2008. It was followed by an EP on Captured Tracks and a 7" on HoZac Records. Dee Dee quickly gained attention with these releases and signed to Sub Pop in July 2009. Dum Dum Girls' debut album, I Will Be, was released in March 2010 and was well received by critics. Dee Dee produced the record with Richard Gottehrer, who had previously worked with Richard Hell, Blondie, the Go-Gos and the Raveonettes. Gottehrer also co-wrote the early 1960s hit songs "My Boyfriend's Back" and "I Want Candy". After its release, Dee Dee assembled a touring band, and their first shows were in support of Girls.
In 2011, the EP He Gets Me High was released, which included a cover of "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" by the Smiths. This record marked the addition of Sune Rose Wagner of the Raveonettes to the production team. Second album Only in Dreams was released in September 2011, featuring the singles "Coming Down" and "Bedroom Eyes". This album is the only Dum Dum Girls recording to feature the full band. In September 2012, the EP End of Daze was released, preceded by the single "Lord Knows" on July 31, 2012, which Pitchfork awarded "Best New Track". The EP received "Best New Music" from Pitchfork as well. On October 31, 2013, Dum Dum Girls announced their third full-length album Too True, set for release on January 28, 2014 and featuring the single "Lost Boys & Girls Club", whose video premiered with H&M on October 31, 2013. For this album, Dee Dee cited Suede, Blondie, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Pretenders, Madonna and the Stone Roses as her influences.
On January 28, 2016, Dee Dee announced the closure of the Dum Dum Girls and the creation of a new solo project, Kristin Kontrol.[25] Her debut album, X-Communicate, was released by Sub Pop on May 27, 2016.
Goldie & the Gingerbreads was an all-female American rock band from 1962 to 1967. They were the first all-female rock band signed to a major record label. The quartet consisting of Ginger Bianco, Margo Lewis, Carol MacDonald, and Genya "Goldie" Zelkowitz (later Genya Ravan), were among the first to break into a domain dominated by men. They were signed to Decca in 1963 and to Atlantic in 1964.
In 1962, local musician Genya Zelkowitz (later known as Genya Ravan) was introduced to drummer Ginger Bianco (nee Panabianco), in the New York City club where Zelkowitz was the lead singer of Richard Perry's band The Escorts. Panabianco was on stage, drumming for a friend of Perry's. This acquaintance with a female drummer inspired in Genya the idea of an all-female rock and roll band. Genya and Ginger began to look for a pianist and soon recruited Carol O'Grady. Organist Margo Lewis, who turned out to be the group's third permanent member, replaced O'Grady and performed with the group on the Chubby Checker tour. The following year, Goldie and the Gingerbreads found guitarist and vocalist Carol MacDonald, who at the time was signed to Atlantic/Atco Records, and she became the fourth permanent band member. The group's first release on the Spokane Records label was titled "Skinny Vinnie". Although credited to Zelkowitz and Stan Green, the song was, in fact, the Bill Haley composition "Skinny Minnie" with slight lyric changes.
In 1964, fashion photographer and director Jerry Schatzberg threw a party for the Warhol Superstar Baby Jane Holzer that was later referred to by writer Tom Wolfe as "the Mods and Rockers ball, the party of the year." Goldie and the Gingerbreads were booked to provide the musical entertainment and impressed the assembled attendees with both their music and their inimitable presence. Among the guests at this fashionable and well-attended event were The Rolling Stones and Ahmet Ertegün, the chairman of Atlantic Records, who promptly signed them to the label.
Later in 1964, the band met Eric Burdon and The Animals, whose manager contracted the Gingerbreads for a tour in England. In Britain, they toured with The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, The Hollies and The Kinks, among others. Troubles with British working visa requirements led to the band performing dates in West Germany at venues including the Star-Club in Hamburg while they waited for their British work permits to come through. Goldie and the Gingerbread's single "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" reached No. 25 on the UK Singles Chart in 1965. Although it was also released in the United States, a recording of the same song by the heavily promoted Herman's Hermits was released nationwide with great fanfare just two weeks prior to the Gingerbreads' version, thus fatally undermining the Gingerbreads' chances for their first hit single in the U.S.
Over the course of 1967 and 1968, the group began to fragment as various members came and went. A return to the United States in a final attempt to garner mainstream success there failed. Genya Ravan went on to form Ten Wheel Drive and a career in record production and radio. She produced the Dead Boys 1977 debut album Young Loud and Snotty. Carol MacDonald and Ginger Bianco later formed the nucleus of jazz-fusion band Isis. Margo Lewis is owner and president of Talent Consultants International, Ltd., a talent booking agency in New York, and a partner in Talent Source, Ltd, which manages the estate of Bo Diddley. Lewis toured with Diddley as his personal manager and as his keyboard player for the last 10 years of his life.
On November 13, 1997, the Gingerbreads performed once more to mark their 30th anniversary and to commemorate the release of The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock. Accompanying Ginger, Margo and Genya was Debby Hastings on bass and Diane Scanlon on guitar.
Shirley M. Gunter (September 29, 1934 – December 1, 2015) was an American singer and songwriter who led one of the earliest female doo-wop groups, Shirley Gunter and the Queens, in the mid-1950s.
She was born in Coffeyville, Kansas; her younger brother was Cornell Gunter, a founding member of The Platters and later The Flairs. Her brother persuaded the Bihari brothers, owners of Flair Records, to audition her, and they signed Shirley on the spot. After releasing solo singles without success, she formed a group, the Four Queens, with her friends Blondene Taylor and Lula Bee Kenney, and Lula's aunt Lula Mae Suggs.
In 1954, Gunter and Taylor worked up a nonsense song, "Oop Shoop", and the group quickly recorded it with saxophonist and arranger Maxwell Davis. Credited to Shirley Gunter and the Queens, it immediately became a regional hit, and rose to number 8 on the national Billboard R&B chart after being promoted by leading DJ Alan Freed. The song was also covered by the Crew-Cuts, whose version made number 13 on the national pop chart, and Harry James recorded a version in 1955 on his album Jukebox Jamboree (Columbia CL 615). "Oop Shoop" became the first record to be written and performed, with any degree of success, by a group of young black women", and inspired later groups such as the Cookies and the Shirelles.
The Queens recorded several more singles for Flair, and toured widely. However, their records had little commercial success, and the group split up in late 1955. Gunter toured as a solo performer with Young Jessie and the Flairs, and featured on an early Modern Records compilation LP, The Hollywood Rock & Roll Record Hop. She then became a member of the Flairs, and recorded a moderately successful single, "Headin' Home", with them. In 1958, she had a single "Believe Me" bw "Crazy Little Baby" released on Tender Records.
Gunter – who had been registered as legally blind by 1954, and later lost her sight completely – left the music business in 1958. Her only later recordings came in 1965, when she recorded several tracks including the single "Stuck Up", for Ray Charles' Tangerine record label. In 1990, she made a rare appearance with Blondene Taylor, and the Flairs, at a Doo-Wop Society show.
She died in Las Vegas in 2015, aged 81. In the 2000s, Ace Records released a CD compilation of her recordings, Oop Shoop: The Flair And Modern Recordings 1953-1957.
Esther Phillips (born Esther Mae Jones; December 23, 1935 - August 7, 1984) was an American singer, best known for her R&B vocals. She also performed pop, country, jazz, blues and soul music.
Phillips was brought up singing in church. A mature singer at the age of 14, she won the amateur talent contest in 1949 at the Barrelhouse Club, owned by Johnny Otis. Otis was so impressed that he recorded her for Modern Records and added her to his traveling revue, the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan, billed as Little Esther. She later took the surname Phillips, reportedly inspired by a sign at a gas station.
Her first hit record was "Double Crossing Blues", with the Johnny Otis Quintette and the Robins (a vocal group), released in 1950 by Savoy Records, which reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. She made several hit records for Savoy with the Johnny Otis Orchestra, including "Mistrusting Blues" (a duet with Mel Walker) and "Cupid's Boogie", both of which also went to number 1 that year. Four more of her records made the Top 10 in the same year: "Misery" (number 9), "Deceivin' Blues" (number 4), "Wedding Boogie" (number 6), and "Far Away Blues (Xmas Blues)" (number 6). Few female artists performing in any genre had such success in their debut year.
Phillips left Otis and the Savoy label at the end of 1950 and signed with Federal Records. But just as quickly as the hits had started, they stopped. She recorded more than thirty sides for Federal, but only one, "Ring-a-Ding-Doo", made the charts, reaching number 8 in 1952. Phillips eventually launched a comeback in 1962. Now billed as Esther Phillips instead of Little Esther, she recorded a country tune, "Release Me", with the producer Bob Gans. This went to number 1 on the R&B chart and number 8 on the pop chart. After several other minor R&B hits for Lenox, she was signed by Atlantic Records. Her cover of the Beatles' song "And I Love Him" nearly made the R&B Top 20 in 1965. The Beatles flew her to the UK for her first overseas performances.
She had other hits in the 1960s for Atlantic, such as the Jimmy Radcliffe song "Try Me", which featured a saxophone part by King Curtis (and is often mistakenly credited as the James Brown song of the same title), but she had no more chart-toppers. Her heroin dependence worsened, and she checked into a rehabilitation facility. There she met the singer Sam Fletcher. While undergoing treatment, she recorded some sides for Roulette in 1969, mostly produced by Lelan Rogers. On her release, she returned to Los Angeles and re-signed with Atlantic. One of her biggest post-1950s triumphs was her first album for the Kudu label, From a Whisper to a Scream, in 1972. The lead track, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is", an account of drug use written by Gil Scott-Heron, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Phillips lost to Aretha Franklin, but Franklin presented the trophy to her, saying she should have won it instead.
In 1975, she released a disco-style update of Dinah Washington's "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes", her biggest hit single since "Release Me". It reached the Top 20 in the United States and the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. She continued to record and perform throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, completing seven albums for Kudu/CTI and four for Mercury Records, which signed her in 1977. Her first album for Mercury, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, was released that year; according to Village Voice critic Robert Christgau, "using Kudu producer Pee Wee Ellis and the basic Kudu formula—mixing blues and standards and rock with MOR and disco crossovers—she comes up with her most consistent album of the '70s." In 1983, she charted for the final time with "Turn Me Out" which reached number 85 on the R&B chart. She completed recording her final album, A Way To Say Goodbye a few months before her death; it was released by the Muse jazz label in 1986.
Phillips died at UCLA Medical Center in Carson, California, in 1984, at the age of 48, from liver and kidney failure due to long-term drug abuse.
Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso (21 October 1925 – 16 July 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban-American singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname "La Guarachera de Cuba". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" due to her contributions to Latin music in the United States.
As a teenager, her aunt took her and her cousin to cabarets to sing, but her father encouraged her to attend school in the hope she would become a teacher. From 1947, Cruz studied music theory, voice, and piano at Havana's National Conservatory of Music. Isolina Carrillo was one of the first people to recognize Cruz's ability to sing Afro-Cuban music and asked her to join her Conjunto Siboney, where Olga Guillot also sang. She later joined Orquesta de Ernesto Duarte, Gloria Matancera, Sonora Caracas and Orquesta Anacaona. From 1947, she started to sing in Havana's most popular cabarets: Tropicana, Sans Souci, Bamboo, Topeka, etc. In 1948, Roderico Rodney Neyra founded the group of dancers and singers Las Mulatas de Fuego (The Fiery Mulattas). Cruz was hired with this group as a singer, reaching great success and making presentations in Mexico and Venezuela, where she made her first recordings. Shortly thereafter, Cruz began to sing on musical programs at Radio Cadena Suaritos, along with a group that performed Santería music under the direction of Obdulio Morales. With this group, known as Coro Yoruba y Tambores Batá, she made several recordings that were later released by Panart.
Cruz's big break came in 1950 when Myrta Silva, the singer with Cuba's Sonora Matancera, returned to her native Puerto Rico. Since they were in need of a new singer, the band decided to give the young Celia Cruz a chance. She auditioned in June, and at the end of July she was asked to join as lead singer, and thus became the group's first black frontwoman. Her "musical marriage" with the Sonora Matancera lasted fifteen years. In total Celia recorded 188 songs with the Matancera, including hits such as "Cao cao maní picao", "Mata siguaraya", "Burundanga" and "El yerbero moderno". She won her first gold record for "Burundanga", making her first trip to the United States in 1957 to receive the award and to perform at St. Nicholas Arena, New York. During her 15 years with Sonora Matancera, she appeared in cameos in some Mexican films such as Rincón criollo (1950), Una gallega en La Habana (1955) and Amorcito corazón (1961), toured all over Latin America and became a regular at the Tropicana.
In 1960, after the Cuban Revolution caused the nationalization of the music industry, Cruz left her native country, first going to Mexico, and then to the United States, the country that she took as her definitive residence. In the 1960s, she collaborated with Tito Puente, recording her signature tune "Bemba colorá". In the 1970s, she signed for Fania Records and became strongly associated with the salsa genre, releasing hits such as "Quimbara". She often appeared live with Fania All-Stars and collaborated with Johnny Pacheco and Willie Colón. During the last years of her career, Cruz continued to release successful songs such as "La vida es un carnaval" and "La negra tiene tumbao".
Her musical legacy is made up of a total of 37 studio albums, as well as numerous live albums and collaborations. Throughout her career, she was awarded numerous prizes and distinctions, including two Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards. In addition to her prolific career in music, Cruz also made several appearances as an actress in movies and telenovelas. Her catchphrase "¡Azúcar!" ("Sugar!") has become one of the most recognizable symbols of salsa music.
In August and September 2002, Cruz underwent surgery due to breast cancer. In November that year, Cruz fell during a concert in Mexico. She was diagnosed with glioma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and underwent surgery in December. She finished recording her last album, Regalo del Alma. In February, she appeared in public again at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards to receive the award for Best Salsa Album. On the afternoon of 16 July 2003, Cruz died at her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the age of 77.
Bratmobile was an American punk band. It was a first-generation "riot grrrl" band, which grew from the Pacific Northwest and Washington state underground. It was influenced by several eclectic musical styles, including elements of pop, surf, and garage rock.
Bratmobile formed when University of Oregon students Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman collaborated on an influential feminist fanzine, Girl Germs. Neuman's friend Calvin Johnson, an indie musician in the Olympia scene, asked her to play a show on Valentine's Day in 1991 with Bikini Kill and Some Velvet Sidewalk. With five original songs, the band played its first show as a two-woman act at Olympia's North Shore Surf Club on February 14, 1991, with Neuman and Wolfe sharing duties on guitar, drums, and vocals. Briefly, they were joined by a bass player Michelle Noel. They played only a couple shows with this line-up, including one with The Melvins and Beat Happening, also at the "Surf Club" on May 16, 1991.
During spring break 1991, Neuman and Wolfe went to Washington, DC to follow Beat Happening and Nation of Ulysses on tour and try to work on a new form of Bratmobile that, at that time, included artist Jen Smith and Christina Billotte of Autoclave in the line-up. Together, they recorded and released a cassette tape entitled Bratmobile DC. Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson had previously introduced Neuman to nascent guitarist Erin Smith from Bethesda, Maryland during the Christmas holiday in December, 1990 at a Nation of Ulysses show in Washington, DC. Smith was co-author, with her brother, of the much-revered TV pop culture fanzine Teenage Gang Debs when Neuman and Wolfe asked her to jam with them. It clicked, and in July 1991 the trio played their first show as a 3-piece with Neuman on drums, Wolfe on vocal, and Erin Smith on guitar. They were just in time to play at the historic International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia, Washington in August 1991, becoming the only band to appear twice. They played the opening show "Girl Night" and the show at Capitol Lake Park. Between 1991 and 1994 Bratmobile released an album, Pottymouth, and an EP, The Real Janelle, on Kill Rock Stars, as well as The Peel Session recording before the intense media scrutiny and inner pressures of the Riot Grrrl movement hastened the band's breakup (on stage) in 1994.
After the break-up, Molly Neuman moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and began working at East Bay punk record label Lookout! Records. She also played in The PeeChees and The Frumpies. Allison Wolfe moved to Washington, D.C, and she and Maryland-based Erin Smith started a new band together called Cold Cold Hearts. Wolfe has also been active in feminism and activism.
In 1999, the band decided to reunite for a low-key show in Oakland's Stork Club and the band was relaunched to go on tour with Sleater-Kinney. In 2000, they released their second full-length studio album, Ladies, Women and Girls. The album was critically acclaimed and earned Bratmobile new fans as they toured with Sleater-Kinney, The Donnas, The Locust, among others. Ladies, Women and Girls was released on Neuman's Lookout! Records and produced by Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses and The Fucking Champs. Jon Nikki (Prima Donnas, Gene Defcon, Mocket, Sarah Dougher, Sir, Puce Moment) added guitar, bass and keyboard parts to the minimal Brat sound. On May 7, 2002, Bratmobile released their third album, Girls Get Busy. On Girls Get Busy, Audrey Marrs, (Mocket, Gene Defcon) added keyboards that gave the album its distinctive new sound. Marty Violence (Young Pioneers) also contributed bass.
Lynn Annette Ripley (15 July 1948 – 21 May 2015), better known by the stage name Twinkle, was an English singer-songwriter. She had chart success in the 1960s with her songs "Terry" and "Golden Lights".
Twinkle first recorded at the age of 16. Her song "Terry" was a teenage tragedy song about the death of a boyfriend in a motorcycle crash. Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page and Bobby Graham were among the high-profile star session musicians who played on the recording, which conjured up a dark mood with its doleful backing vocals, spooky organ, 12-string guitar and slow, emphatic rhythm arranged by Phil Coulter. The theme was of a common type for the era, it bore some similarities to the Shangri-Las' slightly earlier "Leader of the Pack" (1964), but the record caused a furore, accusations of bad taste leading to a ban from the BBC.
The follow-up, "Golden Lights", was also written by Twinkle, with a B-side again by producer Tommy Scott. The lyrics express disillusionment with the pop business: her EP track "A Lonely Singing Doll", the English-language version of France Gall's 1965 winning Eurovision Song Contest song for Luxembourg, "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", originally written by Serge Gainsbourg, returned to a theme similar to "Golden Lights". "Johnny" continued to explore dangerous territory, this time that of a childhood friend who becomes a criminal, but it seems the pressure to produce "another Terry" led her producers to pass over her own material, for "Tommy", a song written for Reparata and the Delrons and "The End of the World" a tune composed for Skeeter Davis. Twinkle made few live appearances but performed "Terry" at the annual New Musical Express hit concerts. After recording six singles for Decca Records she "retired" at the age of eighteen in 1966.
In 1969 she recorded a self-written single, the Tamla Motown-styled "Micky", backed by "Darby and Joan", both produced by Mike d'Abo. The single vanished, unpublicised. In the ensuing years, unsigned and working in music for advertising, she recorded a suite of songs inspired by her relationship with "Micky", the actor/model Michael Hannah, who was killed in an air-crash in 1974. These remained unreleased until they were included on CD compilations. Her later recordings appeared under the name Twinkle Ripley. She recorded a 1975 single, "Smoochie" with her father, Sidney Ripley as "Bill & Coo".
On 21 May 2015, Twinkle died at 66 on the Isle of Wight, after a five-year battle with liver cancer.
Drew Arriola-Sands is the founder and frontwoman of Trap Girl, a self defined glamorous hardcore punk band with a dark edge. The group consists of Drew Arriola-Sands on vocals, drummer Jorge Reveles, guitarist Esteban Moreno, and Ibette Oritz on bass.
Drew started playing instruments when she was a preteen moving into singing “professionally” in her mid-twenties. She played and sang folk music first and then decided to form a punk band after watching two documentaries, The Gits Movie and The Amazing Adventures of Betty Blowtorch. Two true films capturing the femme DIY punk band experience. By her early twenties, she started her first band, The Glitter Path; Sands describes it as something like Daniel Johnston, the schizophrenic outsider musician, mixed with Patsy Cline. Sands started Trap Girl in 2014 and throughout 2015, the band built their following Downtown and on the Eastside, with Sands finally out as a trans artist.
Trap Girl were embraced and found sisterhood in bands like Sister Mantos and Yaawn. In 2016, Sands took it a step further and organized the first annual Transgress Fest (at the Santa Ana LGBT Center), for trans performers. The band released their first EP "From Diamonds TO Dust" in 2015. Their second EP, "The Black Market" came out in 2017 and it is centered on transgender issues: the experience of “going through the motions of life” before coming out, as well as the process of ultimately coming out, and the realities of a world that is dangerous, both socially and medically, for trans people. Their latest work, "TransAmerican Chokehold" was released in 2019.
