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.
Sheena Naomi McGrath is the drummer of the Brooklyn-based band Aye Nako. The punk band originated in 2010 and promotes a "community-oriented, anti-capitalist, LGBTQ-friendly ideology".
Sheena started drumming when she was 8 and she has been playing for touring bands since she was a teenager. Officially formed in Brooklyn, New York, in 2010, the members of Aye Nako were from Oakland, California, where Mars Ganito (vocals, guitar) and Joe McCann (bass) had been two-thirds of Fleabag, who had changed their name from Aye Nako. After the move to Brooklyn, Ganito and McCann were joined by Jade Payne (guitar) and Angie Boylan (drums) to complete their lineup. Boylan was later replaced by Mcgrath.
They have performed with acts such as P.S. Eliot and the Thermals. Their self-released debut album, Unleash Yourself, came out in the summer of 2013. The band signed to Don Giovanni Records in 2015 for the release of The Blackest Eye EP. Returning to the studio in 2016, the group recorded its second full-length, Silver Haze. Released once again by Don Giovanni, the album came out in early 2017.
Linda Martell (born Thelma Bynem; June 4, 1941) is an American singer. She became the first commercially successful black female artist in the country music field and the first to play the Grand Ole Opry. As one of the first African-American country performers, Martell helped influence the careers of future Nashville artists of color.
Born and raised in South Carolina, Martell listened to country, gospel and R&B music. In her teens, she formed a singing trio with her family titled Linda Martell and the Anglos. In 1962, the band took an eight-hour bus ride to Muscle Shoals, Alabama where they recorded their first R&B single. Re-named Linda Martell and the Anglos, Fire Records released "A Little Tear (Was Falling from My Eyes)" the same year. The single was unsuccessful. The group performed regularly. They also sang backup vocals for R&B performers, such as The Drifters and Jimmy Hughes. Linda Martell and the Anglos (sometimes credited as "The Angelos") released several more singles on the Vee-Jay label, such as "Lonely Hours." However, the group had little success and soon parted ways.
Performing as a solo act, Martell was discovered singing country music on an air force base. This led to an introduction to producer Shelby Singleton, who signed her to his Nashville label in 1969. The same year, the label released her country cover of "Color Him Father." The song became a charting single on the Billboard charts and her debut album followed in 1970. The record reached number 40 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart.
Martell made several appearances on country music television programs and released two more singles with Plantation. She also made her first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry during this time. With her Opry debut, she became the first black female artist to play the show and eventually performed there a total of 12 times. She then retired from the country music industry in 1974 but still remained active in other sectors of music. For about two decades, she sang in small clubs in different parts of the United States. Martell was honored with the Equal Play Award at the 2021 CMT Music Awards. It was given to recognize her work as a female black performer in country music.
Tamiko Jones (born Barbara Tamiko Ferguson, 1945) is an American singer. Her most successful record was "Touch Me Baby (Reaching Out For Your Love)" in 1975.
She was born in Kyle, West Virginia, and has part Japanese, part British, and part Cherokee ancestry. She was raised in Detroit where she first started singing and made her professional debut in a club in 1961. She began her career performing pop songs in a jazz style. Her first record release, credited simply as Timiko, was "Is It A Sin?", issued by Checker Records in 1963. She then moved to the Atco label, recording "Rhapsody" as Tamiko in 1964.
By 1966 she had moved to the Golden World label, recording "I'm Spellbound", and then moved to Atlantic Records where she released several singles during 1967, including "Boy You're Growing On Me". That year, she also recorded the album A Man and a Woman with jazz flutist Herbie Mann. In 1968 she met singer Solomon Burke, and they recorded several duets on his album I'll Be Anything for You. She also recorded the album I'll Be Anything For You, and a single "Goodnight My Love", for Creed Taylor's CTI label, followed by the album Tamiko for the December label. In 1969 her album In Muscle Shoals was issued on the Metromedia label.
Her first chart hit, and most successful record, was "Touch Me Baby (Reaching Out For Your Love)", written by Johnny Bristol and issued by Arista Records, which reached no. 12 on the Billboard R&B chart and no. 60 on the US pop chart in 1975. Its follow-up, "Just You and Me", reached no. 78 on the R&B chart, and she also released an album, Love Trip. In 1976, the single "Let It Flow" (no. 76 R&B) was released on the Contempo label, owned by John Abbey, the founder and editor of Blues & Soul magazine. In 1977, "Cloudy", on the Atlantis label, made no. 92 on the R&B chart, and in 1979 her version of "Can't Live Without Your Love", written and arranged by Randy Muller of Brass Construction and issued on the Polydor label, reached no. 70 on the same chart. Her last R&B chart hit was a version of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You", which made no. 81 on the Sutra label in 1986.
Rosetta Howard (August 30, 1913 – October 8, 1974) was an American blues singer who recorded in the 1930s and 1940s.
Little is known of her life. She was born in Woodruff County, Arkansas, and later moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she began her career by joining in with jukebox selections at the club where she worked. Around 1932, she began singing professionally with Jimmie Noone and other bandleaders including Sonny Thompson. Beginning in 1937 she made a number of recordings with the Harlem Hamfats, including her paean to marijuana, "If You're a Viper", and the ribald "Let Your Linen Hang Low".
She also recorded with Herb Morand and Odell Rand, who were members of the group. In 1939 she recorded with the Harlem Blues Serenaders, who included Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Lil Armstrong, Henry "Red" Allen and Barney Bigard.
She continued to perform in Chicago in the 1940s, and in 1947 featured on recordings with the Big Three, including Willie Dixon and Big Bill Broonzy. The records were unsuccessful, and she did not record again. In the 1950s she sang with Thomas A. Dorsey at the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago.
Gore Gore Girls are a garage rock band from Detroit, Michigan, formed in 1997 by singer/songwriter Amy Gore. The band's name comes from The Gore Gore Girls, a 1972 B-movie by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Like fellow Detroit bands The White Stripes and The Detroit Cobras, the band started out struggling through the local club circuit before being "discovered" by independent record label Get Hip Records in 1998. Their first single "Mama in the Movies" (1999) gained favourable airplay on college radio stations in Michigan, which led to recording their first full-length album Strange Girls in (2000). The second album Up All Night, was released in 2002 and received positive press from the Village Voice and Detroit Free Press. During this time the band toured Europe twice, in 2002 and in 2003, also with infrequent dates in the United States.
The band became a four-piece in 2004 with the addition of The Hammer (Marlene Hammerle) on guitar and began touring the United States extensively. Gore Gore Girls toured as direct support for The Cramps in 2003 and 2004. The band released an EP in 2004, 7 X 4, which became part of their third album, Get the Gore. Tracks from the EP and subsequent third album received airplay on Little Steven's Underground Garage Program on Sirius Satellite Radio; the band was featured at Little Steven's Underground Garage Festival on Randall's Island, New York along with other 'garage rock' luminaries and legends The Stooges, The Strokes, The New York Dolls, The Zombies and others. Get the Gore, released in 2007 on Bloodshot Records, was recorded at Ghetto Recorders in Detroit, Michigan and received positive press from USA Today and Playboy Magazine.
Gore Gore Girls toured Europe again in spring of 2008, the band's third tour of Scandinavia and Western European countries.
Emy Jackson (エミー・ジャクソン, born Emy Eaton, July 2, 1945) is a Japanese singer. She was born in Essex, England, to Japanese parents, and moved to Yokohama as a teenager.
As a teenager in Yokohama her ability to speak both English and Japanese fluently landed her a job as a youth DJ for the Good Hit Parade on Radio Kanto. In April 1965 her debut single Crying In A Storm was released. Jackson was promoted as a foreign artist.[1] The single peaked at #4 on the chart of foreign releases in Music Life and #6 on the Turn Table Top 50.[1] She is the first Japanese artist to have sold a million records singing in English.
Her initial recording career was very brief, consisting of eight singles released in 1965 and 1966, always with a ballad on one side and an uptempo pop song on the other.
She retired from the music business by 1973. In 1984 she released one single called "Cry Yokohama", and came out of retirement in the early 90s. She still performs today.
Mildred Virginia Jackson (born July 15, 1944) is an American R&B and soul recording artist. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, three of Jackson's albums have been certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 copies sold. Jackson's songs often include long spoken sections, sometimes humorous, sometimes explicit. She recorded songs in an R&B, disco, or dance-music style and occasionally in a country style. Jackson has been called the "mother of hip-hop," or of rapping itself. This has more to do with the long spoken sections in many of her songs as opposed to actual rapping. According to the cataloguing site WhoSampled.com, her songs have appeared in 189 samples, 51 covers, and six remixes.
Jackson's recording career reportedly began on a dare to enter a 1964 talent contest at Harlem nightclub Smalls Paradise, which she won. Although she first recorded for MGM Records in 1970, she soon left and began a long association with New York-based Spring Records. Working with the label's in-house producer, Raeford Gerald, her first single to chart was 1971's deceptively titled "A Child of God (It's Hard to Believe)," which reached number 22 on the R&B chart. In 1972, Jackson had her first R&B Top Ten single with the follow-up, "Ask Me What You Want", which also reached the pop Top 30, then "My Man, A Sweet Man" reached No. 7 R&B[10] and No. 50 on the UK Singles Chart; all three songs were co-written by Jackson. "My Man, A Sweet Man" consists of northern soul as is her 1976 recording "A House for Sale". The following year brought her third US R&B top ten hit, "It Hurts So Good," which made No. 3 on the R&B chart and No. 24 on the US Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. The single was featured on the album of the same name and in the blaxploitation film Cleopatra Jones.
In 1974, she released the album Caught Up, which introduced her innovative style of raunchy spoken words. The featured release was her version of Luther Ingram's million-seller, "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right", for which she received two Grammy nominations. By now, she had switched producers to work only with Brad Shapiro, who had been involved with "It Hurts So Good" and "Love Doctor". Working at Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama with the renowned Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, she continued to record most of her material for Spring there, including the follow-up album, Still Caught Up. Over the next ten years, Jackson had a string of successful albums and numerous R&B chart entries, the biggest being her 1977 version of Merle Haggard's country hit "If You're Not Back in Love By Monday". That single was followed by many more, including her version of the Boney M. song, the disco single, "Never Change Lovers in the Middle of The Night." This single peaked at No. 33 on the Black Singles chart in 1979.
Jackson now runs her own record label, Weird Wreckuds. After a lengthy hiatus from recording, she released her 2001 album, Not For Church Folk, which marked a return to her style with an Urban contemporary sound. The album features the singles "Butt-A-Cize" and "Leave Me Alone". The album also features a collaboration with rapper Da Brat on the song "In My Life." Jackson had her own radio show in Dallas, Texas for 13 years. Broadcasting via remote from her home in Atlanta, Georgia, Jackson worked in afternoon drive-time from 3–6 pm on KKDA 730 AM, until January 6, 2012. In 2006, five of Jackson's best-selling albums – Millie Jackson (1972), It Hurts So Good (1973), Caught Up (1974), Still Caught Up (1975), and Feelin' Bitchy (1977) – were digitally remastered and released on CD with bonus tracks. All of Jackson's Spring Records-era albums are available from Ace Records in the UK. An Imitation of Love was re-issued on CD in 2013 by the Funkytowngrooves label in a remastered, expanded edition. Other albums released on the Jive and Ichiban labels remain out of print, though some of those songs appear on compilation CDs. On February 6, 2012, the documentary, Unsung – The Story of Mildred 'Millie' Jackson aired on the TV One network. Jackson performed at Washington, D.C.'s historic Howard Theatre on August 3, 2012, and at B.B. King's Blues Club in New York on August 4, 2012. On June 6, 2015 Jackson was inducted into the Official Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
The Swiss-Spanish artist Jackie Brutsche (also known as Jack Torera) is the singer and guitar player of the band The Jackets. She also plays in the Sex Organs and has a one woman band project.
The Jackets are based in Bern, Switzerland and consist of charismatic singer and guitarist Jack Torera, Chris Rosales on drums and Samuel Schmidiger on bas. The band creates the perfect three-piece; raw, direct and they turn every Jackets concert into an unforgettable event. The music feels new because it is authentic and free of cliché but still captures the simplicity that Rock and Roll must have to stay honest and bold! Songs like “Wasting My Time”, “Keep Yourself Alive” and “Freak Out” have become new anthems for new times but keep the spirit and roots of garage punk in the heart of the song. They mix Punk and Psychedelic ‘60s that make your body move and lyrics that feed your mind.
The band has released four full length LP's - Stuck Inside (Subversiv Records 2009), Way Out (Soundflat Records 2012) and Shadows Of Sound (Voodoo Rhythm Records 2015). In 2017 the band joined forces with producer and musician King Khan who produced a limited edition 7” vinyl single, Be Myself b/w Queen Of The Pill (Voodoo Rhythm 2018) as well as their fourth LP "Queen Of The Pill” (Voodoo Rhythm Records 2019) which was also mixed and mastered by Jim Diamond (White Stripes). In 2021 The Jackets formed their own independent label, Wild Noise Records exclusively to take over sales and distribution of The Jackets complete musical catalog.
The Sex Organs were formed in 2014 by Bone and Jackie and instantly became a cult act playing all over Europe. They do wild, sweaty trash and roll. This is as primitive as it gets!
The Jaynetts were an American girl group based in the Bronx, New York, who became a one-hit wonder in 1963 with the song "Sally Go 'Round the Roses", which reached No. 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
In 1954, Bronx-native Zelma "Zell" Sanders produced "Lonely Nights" by a female R&B vocal group called The Hearts. With no major labels interested in a track by a female R&B group, "Lonely Nights" was eventually released on the small independent label Baton and became one of the earliest girl-group hits when it made the US R&B Top 10 hit single in 1955. This success allowed Sanders to found her own doo-wop-oriented label, J&S. The Jaynetts name was conceived by adding the "J" in "J&S" to "Anetta", the middle name of Lezli Valentine, a session vocalist who sang on the group's 1957 debut, "I Wanted To Be Free", as well as on other J&S releases. The lead vocal on "I Wanted to Be Free" was by Justine "Baby" Washington, who regularly performed on the Hearts' releases in 1956–57; Washington also began recording solo in 1957 with the B-side of her second release, "Hard Way to Go" (1958), being a track credited to the Jaynetts entitled "Be My Boyfriend."
J&S Records had its first national success in 1961 when Abner Spector, an A&R man for the Chicago-based Chess Records, utilized J&S's Tuff subsidiary for the release of The Corsairs' hit "Smoky Places" which reached #12 in March 1962. In 1963 Spector had Zell Sanders assemble the line-up to cut a girl group record, and Spector's wife Lona Stevens wrote "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" with Sanders for this purpose. The credited members of the Jaynetts who recorded "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" were Yvonne Bushnell, Ethel Davis (aka Vernell Hill), Ada Ray Kelly and Johnnie Louise Richardson, who had all previously recorded for J&S; a fifth credited member Mary Sue Wells (aka Mary Sue Wellington/Mary Green Wilson) was recruited through a newspaper advertisement. It was announced that Johnnie Louise Richardson, Sanders' daughter, who had been a member of Johnnie & Joe, was not intended as a group member beyond singing on their first track. Vocalists who sang on "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" besides the five credited personnel include J&S veterans Selena Healey, Marie Hood, Marlene Mack (aka Marlina Mack/Marlina Mars), Louise (Harris) Murray (a member of the original Hearts), Lezli Valentine and Iggy Williams. The sessions produced only the one song, being released with the song's instrumental track as its B-side, credited to 'Sing Along Without the Jaynetts'. The single reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated 28 September 1963.
The single's success led to the release of a Sally Go 'Round the Roses album on Tuff; besides the title cut, in both the vocal and instrumental versions, and the follow-up single "Keep an Eye on Her" "bubbled under the Hot 100" in November 1963. The album featured "Archie's Melody", "Bongo Bobby", "I Wanna Know", "No Love At All", "One Track Mind", "Pick Up My Marbles", "School Days" and "See Saw"; also featured as "A Special Guest Appearance" was "Dear Abby" credited to the Hearts, a minor hit (#94) recorded by at least some of the same personnel as "Sally Go 'Round the Roses", and with the same "Sing Along without the..." instrumental-only version on the B-side. Despite the Jaynetts having been promoted as a quintet, their album cover image was of a trio, only two of whom—Ethel Davis and Lezli Valentine—are identifiable. Lezli is the lead voice on "Sally" and she performed the spoken part on "Dear Abby".
The Jaynetts name was used for the release of two further singles on Tuff: "Snowman, Snowman Sweet Potato Nose" and "There's No Love at All" b/w "Tonight You Belong to Me". Throughout 1964 Tuff also released recordings featuring at least some of the personnel from "Sally Go 'Round the Roses"; these releases were credited to the Clickettes (who were Lezli Valentine, Marlina Mars and Iggy Williams), the Poppies (not to be confused with the Poppies who recorded for Epic in 1966) and the Patty Cakes (whose release "I Understand Them" was subtitled "A Love Song to the Beatles"). In 1964, the Roulette single "Changing My Life for You" b/w "I Would If I Could", credited to the Z-Debs, was sung by members of the Jaynetts who had recorded "Sally Go 'Round the Roses". The 1964 J&S single, "Cry Behind the Daisies", was the first release credited to the Jaynetts with a new core line-up, retaining Johnnie Louise Richardson and adding Evangeline Jenkins, Linda Jenkins and Georgette Malone. This group had further J&S releases into 1965 with "Chicken, Chicken, Crane or Crow" b/w "Winky Dinky", "Peepin' In and Out the Window" b/w "Extra Extra, Read All About It", "Who Stole the Cookie" b/w "That's My Baby", "Looking for Wonderland, My Lover" b/w "Make It an Extra" and "Vangie Don't You Cry" b/w "My Guy Is As Sweet As Can Be". The group ceased their recording activities in 1965.
Honey Bane (born Donna Tracy Boylan, 1964, London) is an English singer and actress, possibly best known for her 1981 UK Top 40 single "Turn Me On Turn Me Off".
Honey Bane began her musical career at the age of 14 in 1978 when she formed the punk rock band the Fatal Microbes. The band released a split 12" record with anarcho-punk band Poison Girls the same year. The first single, "Violence Grows" garnered some press attention and was given positive reviews by the British music paper Sounds. After the 1979 breakup of the Fatal Microbes, Bane began a collaboration with Crass. Lending lead vocals and backed by the band under the name Donna and the Kebabs, Crass released the EP You Can Be You in 1979. It was the debut release on Crass' newly found label, Crass Records. The following year, Bane released her debut solo single, "Guilty", and sang vocals for Killing Joke on "What's the Matter" during a February 1980 gig at London's Venue club. The recording was later released on a bootleg album, Killing Joke - Live At The Venue LP.
In 1980, she met Sham 69 vocalist Jimmy Pursey who began to manage her musical career. That year she was signed to EMI/Zonophone records for a five-year recording contract. The collaboration resulted in a new single, "Turn Me On Turn Me Off" which peaked in the UK Singles Chart at No. 37, and Bane subsequently appeared performing the single on Top of the Pops. "Turn Me On Turn Me Off" marked a musical departure of Bane from punk rock to a new wave sound. Bane would be teamed up with Alan Shacklock, Steve Levine and Nick Tauber, to work on several singles, released between 1981 and 1983. Only one more appeared in the UK Singles Chart ("Baby Love" - No. 58) and her musical career floundered, when Bane left her contract with EMI, frustrated with the direction her music was being forced by her label.
During the 1990s, she fronted the band Dog's Tooth Violet. In 2006, she released the single, "Down Thing" / "Got Me All Wrong". In 2015, Bane released her first full studio album Acceptance of Existence, which was over ten years in the making. She released it independently via her website, along with an Anthology CD titled, It's a Baneful Life... The Anthology 1978- 2015, which features her complete works. Both titles were released on Bane's own label, You Can Be You Records.
