Mama Yancey

The other half of the blues team led by pioneering boogie-woogie pianist Jimmy Yancey, Estelle "Mama" Yancey was a talented vocalist known for her warm sense of humor and great command of the stage. In her childhood, Estelle Harris sang in church choirs and learned guitar. Jimmy Yancey, who had traveled the U.S. and Europe as a vaudeville dancer, married Estelle in 1917, when she was 21. Yancey often sang with her husband at informal gatherings, house-rent parties, and clubs in the 1930s and '40s in Chicago. Because Jimmy Yancey was not that good a blues singer, but was a grea...