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Elvie Thomas 1891-1979
'Motherless Child Blues' by Elvie Thomas, Phantom of American Music Video The New York Times 14 April 2014
This video is part of an interactive feature that follows the trail of the women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace.
The footage shows one of only two known records of "Motherless Child Blues," sung by Elvie Thomas.
Produced by Leslye Davis; audio provided by Revenant Records Read the story, and hear more music by Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley: http://nyti.ms/1eGbGgq
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyP9itrER3c
The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie On the trail of the phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace. NYT 13 April 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html
Elvie Thomas 1891-1979
there exist no ghosts more vexing than a couple of women identified on three ultrarare records made in 1930 and ’31 as Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley.
There are musicians as obscure as Wiley and Thomas, and musicians as great, but in none does the Venn diagram of greatness and lostness reveal such vast and bewildering co-extent.
In the spring of 1930, in a damp and dimly lit studio, in a small Wisconsin village on the western shore of Lake Michigan, the duo recorded a batch of songs that for more than half a century have been numbered among the masterpieces of prewar American music, in particular two, Elvie’s “Motherless Child Blues” and Geeshie’s “Last Kind Words Blues,” twin Alps of their tiny oeuvre, inspiring essays and novels and films and cover versions, a classical arrangement. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/
http://www.nytimes.com/video/magazine/
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