1929
FUNNY FEATHERS * VICTORIA SPIVEY * PARLOPHONE 2177 * UK
Victoria Spivey was born Houston, Texas in 1906 and died in 1976, she started to sing and play piano at the end of the First World War in and around the more transient night clubs and dives of Houston and Dallas, but it wasn't until 1926 that she recorded her first song Black Snake Moan for OKeh. Most of Victoria Spivey's early recordings are very much in the Blues category but she was a versatile performer and songs like Funny Feathers and the flip How Do You Do It That Way? were already moving away from the Blues idiom - it was virtually the only category for Afro American singers at the time so that everything got released under that heading - towards what would later became known as Rhythm and Blues.