Victoria Spivey

 ( 1906 Births ) 

The Great Depression did not put an end to Spivey's musical career. She found a new outlet for her talent in 1929, when the film director King Vidor cast her to play Missy Rose in his first sound film, Hallelujah!. Through the 1930s and 1940s Spivey continued to work in musical films and stage shows, including the hit musical Hellzapoppin (1938), often with her husband, the vaudeville dancer Billy Adams.

In 1951, Spivey retired from show business to play the pipe organ and lead a church choir, but she returned to secular music in 1961, when she was reunited with an old singing partner, Lonnie Johnson, to appear on four tracks on his Prestige Bluesville album Idle Hours.

The folk music revival of the 1960s gave her further opportunities to make a comeback. She recorded again for Prestige Bluesville, sharing an album, Songs We Taught Your Mother, with fellow veterans Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin, and began making personal appearances at festivals and clubs, including the 1963 European tour of the American Folk Blues Festival.

In 1961, Spivey and the jazz and blues historian Len Kunstadt launched Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues, jazz, and related music, prolifically recording established artists, including Sippie Wallace, Lucille Hegamin, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Turner, Buddy Tate, and Hannah Sylvester, and also newer artists, including Luther Johnson, Brenda Bell, Washboard Doc, Bill Dicey, Robert Ross, Sugar Blue, Paul Oscher, Danny Russo, and Larry Johnson.

Spivey also hosted a column entitled "Blues Is My Business" in Len Kundstadt's magazine Record Research from 1962 to 1970. Notably, Spivey disputes the peaceful exchange between herself and Blind Lemon Jefferson over his recording of "Black Snake Moan" just months after her recording "Black Snake Blues". While many descriptions of "Black Snake Moan" cite Spivey as inspiration for Jefferson's recording, her account reveals the interaction to be more in line with the kind of erasure black women performers of this era experienced.

In March 1962, Spivey and Big Joe Williams recorded for Spivey Records, with harmonica accompaniment and backup vocals by Bob Dylan. The recordings were released on Three Kings and the Queen (Spivey LP 1004) and Kings and the Queen Volume Two (Spivey LP 1014). Dylan was listed under his own name on the record covers.Gray, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. pp. 630–631 A picture of her and Dylan from this period is shown on the back cover of the Dylan album, New Morning. In 1964, Spivey made her only recording with an all-white band, the Connecticut-based Easy Riders Jazz Band, led by the Trombone Big Bill Bissonnette. It was released first on an LP and later re-released on compact disc.

Spivey married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd, Billy Adams, and Len Kunstadt.

Spivey died in New York on October 3, 1976, at the age of 69, from an bleeding.

• Idle Hours (Bluesville, 1961) with Lonnie Johnson (three tracks)
• Songs We Taught Your Mother (Bluesville, 1962) shared album with Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin (four tracks)
• Woman Blues! (Bluesville, 1962) with Lonnie Johnson
• A Basket of Blues (Spivey, 1962) shared album with Buddy Terry, Lucille Hegamin and Hannah Sylvester
• Victoria and Her Blues (Spivey, 1962)
• Three Kings and the Queen (Spivey, 1964) shared album with Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Williams and Lonnie Johnson
• The Queen and Her Knights (Spivey, 1965) shared album with Lonnie Johnson, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Slim and Sonny Greer
• Music Down Home: An Introduction to Negro Folk Music, U.S.A. (1965)
• The Blues Is Life (1976)
• Classic Piano Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2008)

• Classic female blues
• List of blues musicians
• List of classic female blues singers
• List of country blues musicians
• Spivey Records

• (1993). 9781558592711, Abbeville Publishing Group. . ISBN 9781558592711

• Victoria Spivey's record label
• Guide to the Victoria Spivey Collection, 1925-1940, 1961-1976, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University - Newark
• Victoria Spivey papers, circa 1960–1976, Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
• Victoria Spivey (1908-1976) on Red Hot Jazz Archive
• Illustrated Spivey Records discography Stefan Wirz
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Victoria Spivey papers, circa 1960-1976
• 1960 interview with Paul Oliver