Singer’s period pieces inspired by the 1930s

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This article was published 23/04/2010 (6020 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She’s a sassy little lady with a big electric guitar.

She’s got the sweet, plaintive voice of a gal you’d notice hanging out her wash in Tennessee or Louisiana. But Little Miss Higgins is pure prairie.

The rising retro-blues performer is the pride of Nokomis, Sask., a town of 400 located midway between Regina and Saskatoon.

The singer-songwriter, whose full name is Jolene Higgins, has affectionately described the community as "Corner Gas times 10."

She and her Winnipeg-bred partner, fellow guitarist Foy Taylor, have lived in Nokomis for about six years in a funky old house with a big garden.

What’s there to write old-timey songs about in such a slow-moving burg?

The fun-loving Higgins — speaking by phone from a Saskatchewan highway — says she’s inspired by her experiences, such as having to drive 40 kilometres to buy underwear.

"Well, I went over to Watrous to the little Bargain! Shop / set up in a Quonset off of Main Street half a block," she sings in the jaunty Bargain! Shop Panties. The song sounds as if it should be on a scratchy 1930s record, complete with male singers who semi-shout "Bargain shop panties!" in the background.

Higgins, 31, and Taylor, 35, appear tonight and Saturday, supported by a bassist, drummer and drop-in musician friends, at Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club. They’re touring behind the just-released Across the Plains, Higgins’ third studio album after Cobbler Shop Sessions (2005) and Junction City (2007).

They’ve been playing at Times Change(d) since 2004, Higgins says, and through proprietor John Scoles have forged strong connections to the Winnipeg roots, blues and jazz scene. They’ll be back here during the Jazz Winnipeg Festival, running June 25 to July 4.

The rustic, horn- and clarinet-laced Across the Plains was recorded at Winnipeg’s Bedside Studio. Local musicians on the disc include Big Dave McLean on harmonica, Jimmie James McKee on trumpet and Joanna Miller on drums.

Higgins, born in Brooks, Alta., spent her childhood in Independence, Kansas — her dad was an oil man — until the family returned to Alberta when she was 14. She remembers being taken to musicals in Kansas and being fascinated by the pit orchestra.

Classically trained on the piano, she fell in love in her teens with old-school country, jazz and blues, especially African-American greats of the 1920s through the ’40s such as Billie Holiday, Mamie Smith, Big Bill Broonzy and her greatest inspiration, blues mama Memphis Minnie.

Higgins also studied theatre at college — a background that’s evident in her onstage patter and flair for ’30s and ’40s style.

"I think (that period) is so attractive and wonderful," she says. "Not only the music was amazing, but the clothes, the look, the hairstyles, the cars."

The blues legends who predated rock ‘n’ roll raised their voices against injustice, Higgins notes. She’s following that tradition with songs such as Snowin’ Today: A Lament for Louis Riel, which mourns the hanging of the Métis leader.

Higgins says country-blues giant Memphis Minnie, one of the first blues players to take up the electric guitar, was a small woman like her, with a big, gutsy personality.

"She was a real influence (on me) in terms of her style of guitar playing. She’d do these cutting contests with other guitar players, and she’d just tear it up. The prize would be a couple of bottles of whisky.

"She’d chew tobacco and have a little teacup beside her to spit in."

Minnie’s lyrics, in songs such as I’m Gonna Bake My Biscuits, were laced with suggestive double entendres. Higgins wittily carries that on with a naughty new number called Glad Your Whiskey Fits Inside My Purse that isn’t just about Jack Daniels.

"There’s a Mamie Smith song called Golfing Papa," she says, breaking into saucy song: "’Golfin’ papa, you’re way over par/ You have to stop puttin’ on my green.’ It’s so good!"

 

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca