Ian Wallace | en

Sippie Wallace (born as Beulah Thomas, November 1, 1898 – November 1, 1986) was an American singer-songwriter. Her early career in local tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by herself or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas. Her accompanists included Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams. Among the top female blues vocalists of her era, Wallace ranked with Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and Bessie Smith. In the 1930s, she left show business to become a church...

Bennie Wallace began playing jazz in 1959 in a school band under the direction of jazz drummer Chet Hedgecoth. Hedgecoth took the students to hear good jazz bands in the area and once even drove them a hundred miles to hear the Count Basie band. Through Chet, Wallace also discovered the Amvets club, a local black after-hours jazz venue. It was there that he had his first opportunity to sit in and play in a real jazz club. In the summer of 1965, the owner of the Amvets, Seth Crenshaw, gave Wallace his first regular job as a band leader....