Guitarist and producter Tom Rodwell with Coco Davis. Photo / Garth Badger
It's ironic that female blues singers were first to establish successful recording careers, with Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and others in the early 1920s.
They preceded their male counterparts like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton and later Robert Johnson.
However, from around 1930 on it's difficult to note more than
a handful of female blues singers who became prominent.
The good news is that there's a lady from Auckland, New Zealand, who is leading a one person mission to revive this beguiling music genre that's almost a century old.
In Old Haunts Coco Davis channels the music of the classic blues ladies, and in settings that are mostly spare but always inspired. Bessie Smith songs include Cemetery Blues, Devil's Gonna Get You, In My Girlish Days and 'Lectric Chair, all delivered with bucket-loads of sass and style.
