Sue Foley – One Guitar Woman
12 Tracks – 43 minutes
Ottawa born Sue Foley got her start playing her father’s guitar at age 13 and became interested in playing the blues after listening to The Rolling Stones and other era blues rock bands. At age 16, she played her first professional performance. After graduating high school, she moved to Vancouver and formed her first band. That band played over 300 shows in 1989 traveling across the US, Canada and Europe. She sat in with Duke Robillard at the W.C. handy Awards in Memphis that year where Austin club owner Clifford Antone saw her performance. She sent a demo tape to Antone’s Records and followed with an audition. She was immediately signed and following a move to Austin, she released her debut album in 1992.
Recognized as a pioneer in an industry where at the time there very few female guitarists, she became interested in the history of other women guitarists. As a result, she started a music history project she called Guitar Woman, which consisted of interviews with dozens of female guitarists and the release of numerous articles and work on a book between 2001 and 2008. She released many solo albums both before, during and after that period. She also teamed up with Peter Karp for two albums and joined a supergroup that consisted of Billy Gibbons, Jimmie Vaughan, and Mike Flanigan.
Now she returns to her Guitar Woman project with release of her One Guitar Woman album. Her liner notes say, “The Women in this album represent some of the historic players who have influenced me and who have been my guides throughout my career. They were massively talented, and they all possessed courage and vision which transformed both their cultures and the story of the guitar. The one guitar references that she set aside her beloved and routinely utilized Fender Telecaster instead utilizing a nylon-string acoustic guitar she purchased in 2022 while in Paracho, Mexico. She selected the dozen cuts on this album as a tribute to the women who came before her.
The liner notes included with the album provides details of the history of each of the selected women. I will simply reference you to the album for the intriguing backgrounds of these woman. She opens the album with “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie”, a song from Elizabeth Cotton who was born in 1893 and did not start performing professionally until she was 60 years old after her talent was discovered by Pete Seeger’s family who had hired her as a housekeeper. “Freight Train” by Cotton also appears later on the album. Cotton was a left-handed Piedmont picker who played her guitar upside down which Sue says makes it impossible to duplicate her sound.
Memphis Minnie is also represented with two songs “In My Girlish Days” and “Ain’t Nothing in Rambling”. Minnie, whose actual name was Lizzie “Kid” Douglas, was born in New Orleans in 1897. Minnie played a pivotal role in moving the blues sound to the electric guitar and into an era of rock ‘n’ roll. Sue chose the two songs for their lyrical content.
“Mother” Maybelle Carter’s songs “Lonesome Homesick Blues” and “Maybelle’s Guitar” flatpicking style including the “Carter scratch” was also difficult to duplicate. Maybelle considered the matriarch of country music, and the mother-in-law of Johnny Cash played a 1928 Gibson L5, which many consider to be the most important single guitar in country music.
Lydia Mendoza as born in Houston Texas in 1916 to migrant workers that hitchhiked with her family across the southern U.S. She entertained fellow migrant workers with her music. Sue sings the song “Mal Hombre” in Spanish with some English verses thrown in. Lydia was ultimately inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame and honored by a National Medal of Honors for her six-decade career.
Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley only teamed up for six recordings all released in the 1920’s. Their songs are considered to have a lasting impact in the early era of country blues. Two of the songs, “Motherless Child Blues” and “Last Kind Words Blues” were again chosen for their lyrics which provide a reference to the era’s societal norms.
Chuck Berry once said that his whole career was an impression of the performances of Sister Rosetta Tharpe who played an electric guitar with windmill strumming and duck walks across the stage. Born in 1915, she was known as the “Godmother of Rock and Roll”. Sue chose “My Journey to the Sky”, one of the less flashy songs in Rosetta’s repertoire but offered a reflective side of her personality.
Ida Presti was born in France in 1924. As a baby her father stretched her fingers so she could play guitar. She never attended any regular school as her father instructed her in guitar practice for many hours every day. She died at age 47 while on a U.S. concert tour. “Romance in A Minor” is the selected cut on this album.
Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza became simply known as Charo. Influenced by gypsies who camped on her family’s property and trained classically in Spain, she became renowned for her expertise in playing Spanish guitar and flamenco music. The speed of her playing was difficult to duplicate. Her wit, comedic presence, and her trademarked catchphrase “cuchi-cuchi” resulted in many appearances on variety shows in the 1960’s such as Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and Laugh-In. The album concludes with the instrumental “La Malaguena”.
Sue has been nominated thirteen times in the Blues Music Award category of Traditional Female Artist of the year and has won three consecutive times. She is nominated again in that category in the 2024 awards which will be given out on May 9 in Memphis. Sue cites the accomplishment of these women who “forged the path for all female guitarists”.
