Sippie Wallace
Known in her heyday, the '20s, as "the Texas Nightingale," Sippie is now a sassy octogenarian, but she's living up to her billing. This album, her first since 1966, shows her to be not merely a national treasure as one of the last classic blues "shouters," but still a stirring artist. Lordy! Sippie will jerk tears from you on Irving Berlin's Say It Isn't So, and set your gams to gamboling with her rendition of Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams' Everybody Loves My Baby. Rock queen Bonnie Raitt, instrumental in resuscitating Sippie's recording career (PEOPLE, April 12), sits in, harmonizing on Sippie's Women Be Wise and adding her expert slide guitar on Suitcase Blues. Backup was provided by pianist Jim Dapogny and his Chicago Jazz Band, out of Ann Arbor, Mich. Sippie and her gang cut this LP in two 12-hour marathon sessions the way they used to, with everyone playing at once rather than recording parts separately. The result is spontaneous musical joy.
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