Ken Wallis, President of The Escarpment Blues Society, in Southern Ontario, Canada held a panel discussion on Women In Blues. The following is a transcript of that discussion, edited and amended for brevity and clarity. This is Part One of that discussion, with more to come in the next few days.
Ken Wallis
What I'm going to do, first of all is have a little introduction, a little bio on our panelists here.
So first off, Cheryl Lescom. I don't know what else I can say, but she's a powerhouse vocalist. This woman is amazing. She's appeared with numerous bands over the years. LTZ, Cheryl Lescom And The Choir Boys, currently with the SheWolves Of London. She started out as a backup singer for Ronnie Hawkins and Long John Baldry. Oh my goodness. I got to hear a little more about that someday.
Cheryl Lescom
No you don't. [laughter]
Ken Wallis
Cheryl has Performed with the best in the Blues world, the likes of Jeff Healey, Matt Minglewood, Dutch Mason and Downchild. Her lengthy career spans over 30 years,
Chuckee Zehr is a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter. She's been performing her original tunes with Chuckee and the Crawdaddies. She's also in LTZ with Cheryl Lescom and Rick Taylor, and of course, the SheWolves Of London. She's a classically trained pianist with a voice reminiscent of Janis Joplin, and she frequently does tributes of Janis.
Rosie Fletcher Dufour is our businessperson here. Well known for Dabloozman Productions’ house concerts in Waterdown with her husband Dan Dufour. She’s been a champion of the blues in Southern Ontario for over two decades. Fondly known as 'Shep,' she handles the business side for numerous blues artists, managing everything from bookings to taxes.
Rosie is a chartered professional accountant, the former treasurer of The Toronto Blues Society, currently lending her vocal and percussion talents to Brave Strangers, a Bob Seger tribute band.
Dale Anne Brendon is the drummer for Shewolves Of London. She’s worked with Randy Bachman, Roger Hodgson (Supertramp), Morgan Davis, and Jeans And Classics and countless others. She has been the drummer for the Women’s Revue and has also often been involved with theatre productions at the Stratford Festival Of Canada, drumming for their productions of Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. She studied music at Western University and jazz drumming at Humber College.
Ken Wallis
And these four talented women have volunteered their time to be on this panel. Thank you all for coming, I appreciate it.
I’m going to do a little bit of a history of Women In Blues. In the 1920s, women in blues blossomed with the talents of such African American women as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday who was known as the Mother of the Blues. Bonnie Raitt said she was inspired by the story of Memphis Minnie who would go busking on the street dressed as a man because it wasn't appropriate in those days for a woman to busk.
The next set of the women in the Blues had a lot of influence, Etta James. Ella Fitzgerald, Big Mama Thornton, who wrote Hound Dog, which Elvis sang, and Ball and Chain that Janis Joplin covered. And Sippie Wallace, who was another big influence on Bonnie Raitt.
Going through history we've had Coco Taylor with the Chicago Blues, Janis Joplin of course, there's all kinds of women that we could talk about currently. Shemekia Copeland, Susan Tedeschi, Samantha Fish, Beth Hart. But, what I'd like to concentrate are the women in Canadian Blues and there are a lot of them.
The panel here of course, we've got Rita Chiarelli, Angel Forest, Sue Foley, Miss Emily, Crystal Shawanda, Shakura S’Aida, Megan Parnell, Erin McCallum, Dawn Tyler Watson, Angelique Francis, Suzie Vinnick, Sue Foley, Lindsay Beaver, Laura Greenberg, Ellen McIlwaine, Samantha Martin, and It just goes on and on, and, it's an amazing fact that there are a lot of women in Canadian Blues.
So let’s open the discussion. I would like to ask the panel what really got you interested first to perform in the Blues music world. I'll start with Cheryl.
Cheryl Lescom
OK, in 1974 I was a waitress at a bar in Kitchener called the Coronet. Heart played and nobody knew who they were, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They were there for two nights and the first night they came in, it was a really yucky February night, and they had just opened up for Rod Stewart. And, nobody had a clue who they were. So the place was empty. All of us waitresses just got to sit there in complete awe because they did a whole Zeppelin set and played harmonica. She's got one of those voices that it fits no matter what genre she's doing. She can really nail it. After the bar closed, I got talking to her and I said, I've always sang and the Blues has been something I love with Janis Joplin. Of course, she was my biggest influence because of the type of voice that I have. I don't have a pretty voice. I have a raunchy voice, and Tina Turner and Janis both have that sort of style. So, I'm talking with her afterwards and I said, I just really want to do this. And she said, well stop talking about it, quit smoking, quit your bar job, get a band, get some music lessons and do it. So that's what I did, and it's been 45 years.
Ken Wallis
Chuckee how did you get started?
Chuckee Zehr
Well, I actually started in more Rock and Country, and I never really was into the Blues that much and actually this woman here Cheryl, we used to go watch her play. She played with some friends of mine and we were still in high school, and she would come out and be in the talent show and just blow the pants off everyone, and I was just in awe of this woman. So anyway, I did get asked by her to come and play on an album and so then I just kind of got into the Blues then. I've been in music since I was six, that's a long time ago but playing the Blues actually would be about maybe 30 years.
Ken Wallis
And Rosie, you are a chartered accountant and you went and got your degree. And then how did you ever end up having house concerts with the Blues?
Rosie Fleischer-Dufour
Well, it started off 22 years ago. I met my husband, Dan Dufour, at the Southside Shuffle in Port Credit. It was just a chance meeting, and we just knew from that point on we were meant to be together. And then from there on, he was in several bands, and I was always the groupie and I wanted to give back at that time with what I could. And that's when I started being the Treasurer of the Toronto Blues Society, which was a great experience to see how the inside worked. Time passed and then we did a couple of house concerts, but they were at the Moonshine Cafe, because we just lived a block away. And we just said, well, this is lovely, but it'd be cool to have them in our own house. So after we downsized, then we upsized. We moved to Waterdown, we bought a bigger house and then COVID hit. So I had one concert in 2019 and that was Steve Strongman. Then, I had a musician move in with us and that was David Rotundo and he stayed and hung out for a year. And I learned more about the business. I was lucky I had him with my husband playing every day. It was awesome. Anyways, then we started doing the house concerts in 2021 and we do about 6 a year now and I just love it, and it's really opened up working with David as well as with Steve Strongman, it's really opened up a whole new sort of second career for me. I like promoting artists, I like holding concerts, and basically our motto is to to get the most for the artist.
Ken Wallis
And those house concerts are fantastic.
Rosie Fleischer-Dufour
Yeah. Thank you
Ken Wallis
And Dale Anne you're not exclusively a drummer for the Blues. You do a lot of drumming, but how did you get started?
Dale Anne Brendon
When I was just old enough to start playing in the bars in London Ontario, where there was an explosion on the Blues scene in a good way, a good explosion. There were so many bars. I think there were four bars in London offering up Blues quite a few nights a week, so I could work on a Monday night or Tuesday night, certainly. Friday, Saturday, everyone was coming through town. People like Cheryl Lescom, Morgan Davis. Michael Pickett. I just met all kinds of Blues people. What I actually wanted to do was be a rock drummer, but the Blues were so hot that I could work all the time as a Blues drummer. So then in the 90s, I started going to Grossmans in Toronto and It was just like a gig factory, and I just sat in and jammed. One night, I was jamming with Mike MacDonald and then the next day I was playing with lots and lots of different artists, but it was easy to get gigs. They were like flowers growing all over the place. So it was fun. Those days aren't here with us anymore.
Ken Wallis
So true, as women in the music scene, I would assume there was a female artist that you looked up to and admired. Anyone care to talk about that?
Cheryl Lescom
Etta James. She's to me the purest of them all. Janis too, because she was a white chick that sang like a black chick, and plus, the late sixties was such a pivotal time for music. I loved Aretha and I love the purity of Gladys Knight. But again, for my voice and for what I was going for, it was Etta and Janis. It's all about the feel and it's all about the story. So those two were really important to me.
Chuckee Zehr
I was really into Detroit Motown. That's the kind of music I was really listening to. And Chaka Khan and The Supremes, even all the sixties girl groups, but mostly the R&B scene was what I really dug
Rosie Fleischer-Dufour
Mine are more recent, I suppose one of our friends was Greg Peltz, and he used to have these parties at his ranch, at his farm, and that's where I think I met you, Cheryl. And you were a woman that I saw, and I went wow what are you doing? You are amazing. And so you're one of the ones that was just a big influence in seeing what women can do.
Dale Anne Brendon
Yeah, my husband introduced me to the music of Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee and John Lee Hooker and stuff like that. And just that early rootsy Blues stuff was a eye opener. It's not drum oriented or anything, but it's really interesting to explore the early roots of Blues.
Ken Wallis
Last year I did a a radio interview with Miss Emily and she's really big on encouraging female artists to get involved in the business and I hadn't thought about it. My radio show basically features new releases and I get so many that I've only got time to put so many new releases in, and then I move on to the next release. And I started going back through my playlists. Men, men, men here, there, everywhere. Very few women, which I have now changed quickly because I don't think that's fair. But I don't understand. To me It seems like a male dominated business. How do we get more females into the business?
Cheryl Lescom
It's tough because when I first started, it was male and it was very chauvinistic and as a female and a band leader, it was not a lot of fun. For women we're raising kids. If you're going on the road, that's tough. For relationships, it's the first thing that a man loves about you and the first thing he hates about you. So it's tougher I think for women because the ability for us to just be transient and move around isn’t easy. It's definitely a business that is not conducive to women.
Chuckee Zehr
I think it's getting more to be though. We're doing the Blues camp in Kitchener. Cheryl and I are instructors, and to see some of these young girls coming up is just amazing. And we've encouraged them to play an instrument as well, because you can play all by yourself if you know how to play a guitar, or piano, and sing, you got it made. Just go and do and play something. Cheryl has got a voice, that is her instrument, and it's an amazing instrument that I think most women would like to sound like you. I know I would. But when I started playing, though, I was playing, I wasn't even singing. They hired me to play piano and that was cool with me. I didn't want to sing a note. I just wanted to play and I wanted to keep up with them, and it was like, hey, I can keep up with you and you guys got to keep up with me. So, yeah, I think it's it has been really tough, but I think it's coming around now because there's so many women performing.
Cheryl Lescom
When I first started, I mean in the early seventies, there was nobody out there. I mean, Rita Chiarelli and I started basically about the same time. And there wasn't a lot of us out there. Now there's a lot, and when you see people like Miss Emily and the Women's Blues Revue, I think I was at the very first one, and it is just that sort of camaraderie, and just meeting women that are all this like minded, and supportive of each other, which is key. And you know, there's not a lot of bullshit and ego. I see that more with men these days than I do women.
Rosie Fleischer-Dufour
Just on that same point, more and more women coming up now, I think they're more transparent. Any of the women that I've dealt with either to book for a house concert or even there's been a couple of women that own bars that I've tried to get somebody in. There's just no problem with communication. It's open, we're on the same wavelength and it's just a little bit more challenging if I'm dealing with a man on that booking, and because I just don't feel as much is being shared, whereas the women do. Kim Duncanson is another person who runs The Juke Joint with Eric and she gave me all kinds of tidbits on how to do this and how to do that. Freely without even asking for it. But with respect to the women and the artists, I'm just really happy we’re seeing so many more coming up. There's seems to be a bit of an age gap in a sense, because I think you grow into Blues. Perhaps, but it's nice to see the young ones at The Summit this February. There are a lot of women singing in the showcase and a lot of young ones too. So it was really, really positive. And I'm looking forward to the future on that.
Dale Anne Brendon
Sort of circling around to where we started in the conversation, I think it all starts with education, and Miss Emily, I'm totally knocked out by her as an artist. She has great musical training. I think she might even have a music degree and she writes her own songs and she sings like a bird, but her composing is top notch. I think if we can all do our little parts in getting education back into the public school system, and whatever private things like the Blues camp and that kind of thing. If people are learning to play instruments and learning to sing, then the bottom of the pyramid swells, and that makes it better for all of us.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
DUE TO LENGTH RESTRICTIONS, THIS ARTICLE IS BROKEN INTO SEVERAL PARTS. PART TWO WILL FOLLOW.
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