Sippie Wallace

Blues-belter Sippie Wallace's recordings with jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong rank among the best of the 1920s. Those recordings alone would be enough to secure her a place in musical history, but in the mid-1960s Wallace came out of a long retirement and wowed a whole new generation of blues, jazz, and rock fans -- doing exactly the things she did forty years earlier. Like good bourbon, her voice just got richer and fuller with age. Bonnie Raitt has cited Wallace as a major influence and has covered many of the songs associated with her.