Celebrate the power of women in the history of the blues with ‘Ladies in the Blues’ music theatre show, from the gospel roots of the 1920s, through vaudeville and jazz, to the blues rock of the sixties and seventies.
Heading to The Town hall Theatre in Galway on September 6, this all Irish cast of four diverse female singers and a cracking band of blues sidemen take you on a women's journey through song with iconic visual backdrops of all those great female trailblazers - Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey, Etta James, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Bessie Smith, Janice Joplin, and many more.
Ladies in the Blues’ journey began in 2015 as a pub gig and has since performed to sold out audiences in the Mermaid Arts Centre, Wicklow, and received standing ovations in national theatres and jazz festivals across the country. This year the show performed on the acoustic stage at Glastonbury Festival, the largest greenfield festival in the world.
St Valentine’s Day 1920 was an iconic moment in blue’s history when Mamie Smith stepped up to the microphone in The Okeh Company in New York and shouted out 'That Thing Called Love'. This was the first recording of a black female vocalist. It led to a second recording which sold 75,000 copies in its first month of release and although it was not a classic blues recording it opened the door to a generation of classic blues vocalists. Through that door came Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and many more transforming the blues from local folk music into the art form it is today. These blues women brought black culture into the American main stream.
The all Irish cast includes singers - Clara Rose, Ireland’s songstress of rocking blues who has recently toured with the great Don Baker; Wicklow native, Emma Nicolai; Dun Laoghaire Queen of Vaudeville, Jhil Quin on washboard and vocals; and introduces new singer Anne Randolph. The show’s house band comprises Ed Deane on guitar, James Delaney on keys, Eoghan O’Neill on bass, and Kevin Malone on drums. This band, the cream of the Irish blues scene, have performed on world stages. The show has released two singles ‘Jelly Roll’ and ‘Misunderstood’ plus the album Ladies In The Blues Live.
In Ladies in the Blues these pioneering women are brought to life - singing such songs as 'CC Ryder', 'Black Coffee Blues', 'I Put a Spell on You', 'Bring it on Home to Me', 'Ball and Chain', 'Piece of My Heart', 'Feelin Good', 'I’d Rather Go Blind', and 'Ain’t Nobody’s Business.'
Tickets can be purchased from https://tht.ie/3252/ladies-in-the-blues.
