Memphis Minnie was the queen of the country blues -- a guitar player so good she beat Big Bill Broonzy in a cutting contest, and a songwriter whose When the Levee Breaks became the foundation for one of Led Zeppelin's most famous tracks. She didn't wait for anyone to give her permission. She picked up a guitar and took what was hers.
Lizzie Douglas from Algiers, Louisiana, ran away from home at 13 to play music on Beale Street. By the 1920s she was recording for Columbia, playing electric guitar before most of the men on the circuit, and writing songs about gambling, drinking, and life on the road -- subjects male bluesmen claimed as their territory. She invaded and conquered.
When the Levee Breaks -- recorded with her husband Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929 about the Great Mississippi Flood -- became a stadium anthem 40 years later when Led Zeppelin transformed it into a thundering rock opus. Minnie got a writing credit. The check was probably smaller than it should have been. She never stopped playing.
The queen of the country blues didn't need anyone's approval. She'd earned it.
