LITMIR.BIZ

      FOREWORD

      The iconic status now accorded Memphis Minnie as a feminist symbol and female potentate in a man’s world is nothing new to the corps of devotees that had already developed by the time Woman with Guitar was first published in 1992. But she is far more widely recognized as a heroine now than when she was known mainly among hardcore blues collectors and among musicians and audiences who knew of her during her performing years. I would argue that much of this new adulation can be traced back to Woman with Guitar. While the number of people who actually read the book and took up her cause may have been only a few thousand, Paul and Beth Garon’s treatise became exponentially important to a more general readership and music-buying audience, especially as the digital age progressed. Woman with Guitar served as a source point for reviewers (of the book and of her CDs), for liner note writers of the many CD compilations that have since appeared, and ultimately for the half a million hits that a Google search for the name Memphis Minnie will now yield on the Internet. And the analytical discussions in the book have also opened more minds to probe what lies beneath the lyrics Minnie sang, to try to interpret and appreciate her songs (and indeed blues songs in general) in the contexts of creativity, imagination and poetic freedom. In the majesty and passion of her art, the blues could be a pathway to the heart or an incantation of desire. It could be a weapon in the war against race and gender prejudice, it could be a claim to free will. It could imbue the mundane with magic, it could conjoin the real with the surreal.