Sippie Wallace, born as Beulah Thomas (1 November, 1898 - 1 November, 1986) was a United States blues singer, songwriter, and pianist. Wallace was born in Houston, Texas to a musical family; her brothers were George W. Thomas, a notable pianist, bandleader, composer, and music publisher, and Hersal Thomas, and her niece was Hociel Thomas (daughter of George). In her youth she sang and played organ in Baptist church where her father was a deacon, …

Victoria Spivey (1906-1976) was an American blues singer. She was born October 15, 1906, the daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flag-man for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. Her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey was also a singer and musician who recorded for several major labels between 1929 and 1937. Victoria Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston, Texas.

Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey, was one of the earliest known professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues. She did much to develop and popularize the form and was an important influence on younger blues women, such as Bessie Smith, and their careers. Born in Georgia or Alabama, there remains debate.

Mamie Smith (May 26, 1883 - September 16, 1946) was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress, and appeared in several motion pictures late in her career. As a vaudeville singer she performed a number of styles including jazz and blues. She entered blues history by being the first African American to make vocal blues recordings in 1920. Smith was born Mamie Robinson in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan and later called Lady Day, was an American jazz singer.

Ida Cox (October, 1890-10 November, 1967) was a popular African American singer, best known for her Blues performances and recordings. Cox was born October, 1890, although historically listed as February, 1896), as Ida Prather in Toccoa, Habersham County, Georgia (Toccoa was in Habersham County, not yet Stephens County at the time), the daughter of Lamax and Susie (Knight) Prather, and grew up in Cedartown, Georgia, …

Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 - September 1, 1977) was an Oscar-nominated American blues vocalist and actress. She was the second African American to ever be nominated for an Academy Award. Waters frequently performed jazz, big band, gospel, and popular music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts. Her best-known recording was her version of the spiritual "His Eye is on the Sparrow".

Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938) is an American blues, soul, R&B, and jazz singer and songwriter. In the 1950s and 60s, she had her biggest success as a blues and R&B singer. She is best-known for her 1961 ballad "At Last", which has been classified as a "timeless classic" and has been featured in many movies and television commercials since its release.

Alberta Hunter (April 1, 1895 - October 17, 1984), was a celebrated African-American jazz singer, songwriter and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful Jazz recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. In the 1950s, she retired from performing and entered the medical field, only to successfully resume her singing career in her 80's.

Memphis Minnie McCoy was an American Blues musician

Lucille Bogan (April 1, 1897 - August 10, 1948) was an early Blues singer (among the first to be recorded) who used the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. She was born in Amory, Mississippi and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. Trained in the rowdier Juke Joints of the 1920s she was primarily accompanied by Walter Roland on piano, with whom she recorded over 50 songs, …

Lucille Nelson Hegemin (November 29, 1894 - 1 March, 1970) was a United States singer and entertainer, and a pioneer African American blues recording artist. Hegamin was born as Lucille Nelson in Macon, Georgia. By the age of 15 she was touring the US South with Minstrel shows. She became a prominent singer, billed as "The Georgia Peach". She settled in Chicago, Illinois in 1914.

Clara Smith (c. 1894 - 2 February, 1935) was a popular blues singer. Clara Smith was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. In her youth she worked on African American theater circuits and tent shows. By the late 1910s she was appearing as a headliner at the Lyric Theater in New Orleans and on the T. O. B. A. circuit. In 1923 she settled in New York City, …

Sara Martin was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky and was singing on the African-American vaudeville circuit by 1915. She began a very successful recording career in 1922, and through the 1920s she toured and recorded with such performers as Fats Waller, Clarence Williams and Sylvester Weaver. On stage she was noted for an especially dramatic performing style, …

Lizzie Miles was the stage name taken by Elizabeth Mary Landreaux (1895 - 1963), an African American blues singer. Miles was born in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, in a dark skinned Francophone Creole ("Creole of Color") family. She traveled widely with minstrel and circus shows in the 1910s, and made her first phonograph recordings in New York City of blues songs in 1922-- though Miles did not like to be referred to as a "Blues Singer", …

Lillian Green was an American blues singer and songwriter. She was born in Mississippi but after the early deaths of her parents she went to Chicago, where she began performing in her teens and where she would make all of her recordings. In the 1930s she and Big Bill Broonzy had a night club act together. Her two biggest hits were her composition "Romance in the Dark" (1940) and Joe McCoy's "Why Don't You Do Right?" (1941).

Mildred Bailey (February 27, 1900 - December 12, 1951) was a popular American jazz singer during the 1930s. Born Mildred Rinker in Tekoa, Washington, Bailey retained the last name of her first husband, Ted Bailey, when she moved to Seattle to bolster her singing career. With the help of her second husband, Benny Stafford, she became an established blues and jazz singer on the east coast. in 1925 she secured work for her brother, …

Eva Taylor (January 22, 1895 - October 31, 1977) was an African American blues singer and stage actress. Born Irene Joy Gibbons in St. Louis, Missouri, she began singing as a child and toured extensively with the "Josephine Gassman and Her Pickaninnies" vaudeville act. As a young woman, she continued her career in music and eventually met the multi-talented writer and composer Clarence Williams.

Trixie Smith (1895 - 21 September, 1943), was a blues singer and recording artist.

Edna Hicks (October 14 1895 - August 16 1925) was an American blues singer and musician. Born Edna Landreaux in New Orleans, she was the half sister of Lizzie Miles. She is believed to have moved north in her mid-teens. Popular in Black vaudeville in the American midwest in the late 1910s and 1920s, she appeared often in Chicago and Cincinnati, and made recordings for seven different record labels in 1923 and 1924: Victor, Vocalion, Columbia, Gennett, Brunswick, Ajax, …

"Sister" Rosetta Tharpe was a pioneering Gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock accompaniment. She became the first great recording star of Gospel music, first surfacing on the pop charts with her 1938 original composition "This Train".

Helen Humes (June 23, 1913 - September 9, 1981) was an American jazz and blues singer. Humes was born in Louisville, Kentucky. She moved to New York in 1937 and became a recording vocalist with Harry James big band. Her swing recordings with Harry James included "Jubilee," "I Can Dream Can't I," "That's The Dreamer In Me," and "Song Of The Wanderer." Humes became one of the vocalists with Count Basie's band in the late 1930s, …

Blue Lu Barker (13 November, 1913-May 7, 1998) was a jazz and blues singer born in New Orleans who often sang and performed with her late husband Danny Barker, a legend of the New Orleans music scene.

Ella Johnson (1918-16 February 2004) was an American jazz and rhythm and blues vocalist. Born in Darlington, South Carolina, she joined her brother Buddy Johnson in New York as a teenager, where he was leading a popular band at the Savoy Ballroom. Her singing drew comparisons to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Johnson scored her first big hit with "Please, Mr. Johnson" in 1940. Subsequent hits included "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?", …

Maxine Sullivan (b. Marietta Williams, May 13 1911, Homestead, Pennsylvania - d. April 7 1987, New York City) was an American vocalist and singer. She was an inductee in the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1998.

Bertha "Chippie" Hill (March 15, 1905 - May 7, 1950) was an American blues and vaudeville singer and dancer, best known for her recordings with Louis Armstrong. One of 16 children, she was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but in 1915 the family moved to New York. She began her career as a dancer in Harlem, and by 1919 was working as a dancer with Ethel Waters. She also performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, …