"When the Blues Was Mass-Market Party Music and Its Reigning Stars Were Women"

"Ironically, the records that the Blues Mafia dedicated themselves to rescuing from obscurity have become far more famous than the smash hits of the 1920s. Male country blues resonated with rock's singer-songwriters in a way that the classic blues never could. While a few women, notably Victoria Spivey and Edith Wilson, lived long enough to return to the stage during the 1960s blues revival, the likes of Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones were far more interested in the hardbitten men of the Delta. 'It is surely no accident that so many of the early blues performers that revivalists scorned as inauthentic were women; to them, authenticity had a male voice,' writes Hamilton."

At the BBC, Dorian Lynskey discusses "[t]he forgotten story of America's first black superstars."