I was once asked if I could go back in time to meet any historical figure, who would I choose and what would I ask them. My answer? I would choose Geeshie Wiley, and I would ask her the question that is on the minds of pretty much every blues enthusiast: “Who are you?”
In the liner notes of the compilation album Mississippi Masters, Don Kent wrote, “If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented.” Geeshie Wiley did exist and she is widely regarded as one of the greatest blues artists in history, and also one of its most elusive figures. Wiley’s six recorded tracks, made for Paramount Records in 1930 and 1931 with her music partner L.V. Thomas, are celebrated as masterpieces of the blues. Despite her profound impact on the genre, details of her life and career remain largely a mystery, leaving scholars and enthusiasts to piece together fragments of her life and artistry.
Marcus Greil (1999) aptly dubbed Geeshie Wiley “the ghost of the blues” while John Jeremiah Sullivan (2014) described her and L.V. Thomas as “phantom geniuses.” In “Unknown Bards,” Sullivan (2011) lamented, “All we know about Wiley is what we don’t know about her” (p. 255). This would eventually change to some degree with the publication of Sullivan’s 2014 New York Times Magazine article, “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie,” but not without its controversy (see Kassel, 2014a, 2014b; Nolan, 2014).
Little is definitively known about Wiley’s life, but we learn through L.V. Thomas’s 1961 interview with musicologist and folklorist Robert “Mack” McCormick that L.V. gave her the nickname “Geetchie” – “I just picked that for her name,” she said – and that is the name Arthur Laibly, recording director of Paramount Records, “decided to put on the records,” she continued (Sullivan, 2014). Scholars have also noted that “Geechee” (or “Geeshie”) suggests connections to the Gullah culture (Sullivan, 2014), but it might also be “a generic name for any black (or sometimes nonblack) person from the coastal area of Georgia or North Carolina” (Greil, 1999, p. 83).
L.V. Thomas also shared in her interview with McCormick that Geeshie Wiley’s real name was Lillie Mae Wiley. We learn from additional research that her married name was Lillie Mae Scott (Sullivan, 2014) and her maiden name was most likely Lillie Mae Boone (Love, 2014). We also now know that L.V. Thomas’s name is not “Elvie.” When McCormick asked about the spelling of her name, she explained, “It’s just the letters L.V. [. . .] that’s all of the name I got but he [Arthur Laibly?] made it out ‘Elvie’ someway” (Sullivan, 2014).
Delta blues musician Ishmon Bracey famously claimed that Geeshie Wiley was born in Natchez, Mississippi (Gioia, 2008, p. 125; Kent, 1994), but also we learned from L.V. Thomas that Wiley was “from some country place” that census documents suggest may have been Louisiana and that she was likely born around 1908 (Sullivan, 2014).
Wiley’s brief but impactful recording career began in the early 1930s when H.C. Speir, a talent scout who combed the South looking for new voices, introduced Wiley to one of the leading producers at Paramount Records (Turner, 2021, p. 33). She and L.V. Thomas recorded six known tracks, all between 1930 and 1931 in Grafton, Wisconsin. Among these were hauntingly beautiful tracks like Wiley’s “Last Kind Words Blues” and L.V. Thomas’s “Motherless Child Blues.” Paramount’s rudimentary recording technology inadvertently contributed to the haunting sound of the records. It’s hard to separate the work from the crackling static you hear in the limited recordings that exist.
One of my favorite tracks is Wiley and Thomas's duet, “Pick Poor Robin Clean”:
After her Paramount sessions, Wiley vanished into obscurity. The details of her life after her recording sessions remain almost entirely unknown. Some reports suggest that she may have lived quietly in the South, possibly working as a domestic laborer or performing music locally. There is no documented evidence of additional recordings or significant public performances after 1931 (at least not that I've found). Scholars and researchers have speculated that Wiley may have died of a head trauma in 1950 and is likely buried in Texas (Love, 2014), but even this remains unverified.
Geeshie Wiley’s recordings, particularly "Last Kind Words Blues," once marginalized by the unholy trinity of poor production quality, Paramount’s fleeting market strategy, and the tendency to privilege male blues artists (Brooks, 2017), have since gained acclaim. John Jeremiah Sullivan rightly argues that Wiley and Thomas’s six songs “are among the greatest country-blues performances ever etched into shellac” and Wiley’s masterpiece, “Last Kind Words,” is “an essential work of American art” (Sullivan, 2014).
These songs, which “are representative of an era in which contemporary African American music was evolving into what we now call blues” (Turner, 2021, p. 33), have been included in numerous anthologies of early blues, appeared in the soundtrack for Terry Zwigoff’s (2010) film Crumb (about the artists Robert Crumb), and inspired countless music artists, including Rhiannon Giddens whose beautiful rendition of “Last Kind Words Blues” helps to highlight and preserve Geeshie Wiley’s place in blues history.
Brooks, D. (2017, February 7). See My Face from the Other Side. Oxford American, 95, Winter 2016. https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-95-winter-2016/see-my-face-from-the-other-side
Gioia, T. (2008). Chapter 5: Hard time killin’ floor: 2. Let the buzzards eat me whole. In Delta blues: The life and times of the Mississippi masters who revolutionized American music (pp. 124–126). W. W. Norton & Company. https://archive.org/details/deltablueslifeti00gioi
Greil, M. (1999). Who was Geechie Wiley? The Oxford American, 3(27/28). https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/67-issue-27-28-1999-third-music-issue
Kassel, M. (2014a, April 29). Robert McCormick’s daughter ‘appalled’ by NYT Magazine cover story. Observer. https://observer.com/2014/04/robert-mccormicks-daughter-responds-to-nyt-magazine-cover-story/
Kassel, M. (2014b, May 1). John Jeremiah Sullivan responds to NYT controversy regarding Robert McCormick (open letter). Observer. https://observer.com/2014/05/john-jeremiah-sullivan-responds-to-nyt-controversy-regarding-robert-mccormick/
Kent, D. (1994). Mississippi masters: Early American blues classics 1927-35 [Liner Notes]. Yazoo Records. http://archive.org/details/cd_mississippi-masters-early-american-blues-c_various-artists-blind-joe-reynolds-elvie-t
Love, C. (2014, April 18). On Geeshie Wiley’s trail [Nytimes.com blog weblog]. The 6th Floor. https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/author/caitlin-love/
Nolan, R. (2014, April 14). Behind the cover story: John Jeremiah Sullivan on the search for Geeshie and Elvie [Nytimes.com blog weblog]. The 6th Floor Blog. https://archive.nytimes.com/6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/behind-the-cover-story-john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-the-search-for-geeshie-and-elvie/
Sullivan, J. J. (2011). Unknown bards. In Pulphead: Essays (1st ed., pp. 253–277). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. https://archive.org/details/pulpheadessays0000sull
Sullivan, J. J. (2014, April 12). The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie: On the trail of phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html
Turner, V. (2021, April). Out of the shadows: Undersung women of the blues and their vast contributions to music. Acoustic Guitar, 31–36.
Zwigoff, T. (Director). (2010). Crumb [DVD]. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/645667346
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Ford, R. (2020). Memphis Minnie (Lizzie Douglas). In A blues bibliography: Update to the second edition (2nd ed, pp. 227–228). Routledge. https://worldcat.org/en/title/71842605
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Hinton, Algia Mae. (2006). In E. M. Komara (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the blues: Vol. 1 A-J Index (p. 432). Routledge.
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Sullivan, S. (2013). Last kind words blues (1930)—Geeshie Wiley. In Encyclopedia of great popular song recordings (pp. 35–36). Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press. http://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofgr0000sull_x5i5
The rise and fall of Paramount. Vol. Two, 1928-32: (Vol. 2). (2014). [Recordings, Field Guide encyclopedia, Paramount ads, and art]. Third Man Records - Revenant Records. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/900610544
van der Tuuk, A., Third Man Records, Revenant Records, & New York Recording Laboratories. (2013). Paramount—The rise and fall Volume one, 1917-1927. Third Man Records - Revenant Records. http://archive.org/details/paramount-the-rise-and-fall-1917-1927
Brooks, D. (2021). Not fade away: Looking after Geeshie & Elvie / L.V. In Liner notes for the revolution: The intellectual life of Black feminist sound (pp. 271–309). The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1192305743
Eagle, B., & LeBlanc, E. S. (2013). Blues: A regional experience. Praeger.
Gioia, T. (2008). Chapter 5: Hard time killin’ floor: 2. Let the buzzards eat me whole. In Delta blues: The life and times of the Mississippi masters who revolutionized American music (pp. 124–126). W. W. Norton & Company. https://archive.org/details/deltablueslifeti00gioi
Kernodle, L. (2004). Having her say: The blues as the Black women’s lament. In J. A. Bernstein (Ed.), Women’s voices across musical worlds (pp. 213–231). Northeastern University Press. https://archive.org/details/womensvoicesacro00bern
Marcus, G. (2015). Three songs, Three Singers, Three Nations: Harvard University Press. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674915312
Oliver, P. (with McCormick, M.). (2019). The blues come to Texas: Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick’s unfinished book (First edition.). Texas A&M University Press. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1013502370
Sullivan, J. J. (2009). Unknown bards: The blues becomes transparent about itself. In Best music writing 2009. Da Capo Press. http://archive.org/details/bestmusicwriting0000unse_q2r3
Sullivan, J. J. (2011). Unknown bards. In Pulphead: Essays (1st ed., pp. 253–277). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. https://archive.org/details/pulpheadessays0000sull
Wardlow, G. (1998). Chasin’ that devil music: Searching for the blues. San Francisco, Calif. : Miller Freeman Books. http://archive.org/details/chasinthatdevilm00ward
Cordeiro, A. (2011). Geechie Wiley an exploration of enigmatic virtuosity [Arizona State University]. https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.9138
Matabane, M. I. (2014). Axe to grind: A cultural history of Black women musicians on the acoustic and electric guitar in the United States [Dissertation, James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University]. https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/ws859f962?locale=en
Beals, J. (2014). All music is the sound of now. McClatchy - Tribune Business News. https://cscu-mcc-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/5csehr/TN_cdi_proquest_wirefeeds_1518670813
Blackwood, S. (2015, Winter/Spring). Excerpt from “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume II: 1928–1932.” TriQuarterly, 147. https://www.triquarterly.org/issue-147/excerpt-from-the-rise-and-fall-of-paramount-records-volume-ii-19281932
Brooks, D. (2017, February 7). See My Face from the Other Side. Oxford American, 95, Winter 2016. https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-95-winter-2016/see-my-face-from-the-other-side
Choi, J. (2014, April 14). Under cover: In pursuit of an unearthly record [Nytimes.com blog weblog]. The 6th Floor Blog. https://archive.nytimes.com/6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/under-cover-in-pursuit-of-an-unearthly-record/
Edgers, G. (2021, July 25). Q&A with Rhiannon Giddens: The power of failure, the genius of Geeshie Wiley and why she’s ‘not just a banjo player.’ Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/rhiannon-giddens-q-and-a/2021/07/21/387eb3b8-e983-11eb-ba5d-55d3b5ffcaf1_story.html
Greil, M. (1999). Who was Geechie Wiley? The Oxford American, 3(27/28). https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/67-issue-27-28-1999-third-music-issue
Kassel, M. (2014a, April 29). Robert McCormick’s daughter ‘appalled’ by NYT Magazine cover story. Observer. https://observer.com/2014/04/robert-mccormicks-daughter-responds-to-nyt-magazine-cover-story/
Kassel, M. (2014b, May 1). John Jeremiah Sullivan responds to NYT controversy regarding Robert McCormick (open letter). Observer. https://observer.com/2014/05/john-jeremiah-sullivan-responds-to-nyt-controversy-regarding-robert-mccormick/
Loudspeaker: The great unknown Geeshie Wiley. (2018). University Wire. https://cscu-mcc-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/5csehr/TN_cdi_proquest_wirefeeds_2031424222
Love, C. (2014, April 18). On Geeshie Wiley’s trail [Nytimes.com blog weblog]. The 6th Floor. https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/author/caitlin-love/
Niyogy, K. (2015, July 29). Ghost woman blues. Mint. https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/Xe2GzdAzc4NS8unHgK6zBI/Ghost-Woman-Blues.html
Nolan, R. (2014, April 14). Behind the cover story: John Jeremiah Sullivan on the search for Geeshie and Elvie [Nytimes.com blog weblog]. The 6th Floor Blog. https://archive.nytimes.com/6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/behind-the-cover-story-john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-the-search-for-geeshie-and-elvie/
Sullivan, J. J. (2014a, April 12). The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie: On the trail of phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html
Sullivan, J. J. (2014b, April 13). Please. . . Don’t bury my soul: Searching for Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, the lost geniuses of the blues. The New York Times, SM24.
Turner, V. (2021, April). Out of the shadows: Undersung women of the blues and their vast contributions to music. Acoustic Guitar, 31–36.
Unknown bards: The blues comes transparent about itself. (2008, November). Harper’s Magazine, 85–94.
Wardlow, G. D. (1990). Six who made recorded history. 78 Quarterly, 1(5), 93–96.
Geeshie Wiley. (n.d.-a). Blind Dog Radio: Mississippi Delta & Country Blues. https://blinddogradio.blogspot.com/2021/02/geeshie-wiley.html
Geeshie Wiley. (n.d.-b). AllMusic. Retrieved July 3, 2024, from https://www.allmusic.com/artist/geeshie-wiley-mn0000190371
Geeshie Wiley—Biography. (n.d.). [Wiki]. Lastfm. Retrieved July 3, 2024, from https://www.last.fm/music/Geeshie+Wiley/+wiki
Knape, N. (2019, March 6). Geeshie Wiley. Norbert Knape. https://norbert-knape.de/geeshie-wiley/
Song of the Day: Geeshie Wiley – Last kind words. (2019, June 16). The Listening Post Blog. https://thelisteningpostblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/16/song-of-the-day-geeshie-wiley-last-kind-words/
Wirz, S. (n.d.). Geeshie Wiley / L.V. (“Elvie”) Thomas. Wirz American Music. https://www.wirz.de/music/wileyfrm.htm
Wolfson, E. (2014, May 29). Geeshie Wiley & Elvie Thomas: Lost & found. American Wolf. https://american-wolf.blogspot.com/2014/05/geeshie-wiley-elvie-thomas-lost-found.html
Brooks, D. (2019, July 23). If You Should Lose Me: The Archive, the Critic, the Record Shop, & the Blues Woman (July 23, 2019). https://sct.cornell.edu/video-archive#2019
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Zwigoff, T. (Director). (2010). Crumb [DVD]. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/645667346
"The collection documents the life, writings, research practices, and business activities of blues scholar Robert "Mack" Burton McCormick who came to serve as a leading authority on the genre."
Materials for Geeshie Wiley are located in Series 14: People Files under Wiley, Geeshie [blues singer] (Box 160, Folder 35). Also see Thomas, L.V. (Box 159, Folder 29).
Finding aid: https://sova.si.edu/record/nmah.ac.1485
"Collection contains typed and holograph manuscripts, correspondence, ephemeral items, advertising records, photographs and clippings related to The Oxford American magazine. The collection is primarily composed of Contributor (author) files and correspondence."
See the contributor files of Greil Marcus (Box 79, Folder 6).
Finding aid: https://libraries.olemiss.edu/cedar-archives/finding_aids/MUM00347.html
Paramount (12951). Format: Shellac, 10" / 78rpm. Released 1930. View Images
Paramount (12977). Format: Shellac, 10" / 78rpm. Released 1930. View Images
Paramount (13074). Format: Shellac, 10" / 78rpm. Released 1931. View Images
Original Jazz Library (OJL-6). Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation. Released 1964. View Images and Archives
Yazoo (L 1001/L-1001). Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Black Label. Released 1968. View Liner Notes and Archives
Story of Blues (CD 3515-2). Format: CD, Compilation, Reissue. Released 1991. View Liner Notes
Yazoo (2007). Format: CD, Compilation, Remastered. Released 1994. View Liner Notes
Rykodisc (RCD 10322). Format: CD. Released 1995. View Liner Notes
Indigo Records (IGOCD2124 Z - UK/IGOCD2124 - Export). Format: CD, Compilation, Reissue. Released 2000. View Liner Notes
Ruf records (RUF 1110)(RCD 10322). Format: CD, Compilation. Released Oct. 25, 2005. View Liner Notes
Yazoo (2202). Format: CD, Compilation, Remastered. Released 2006. View Liner Notes
Night Records (NRHS1 ). Format: Vinyl, LP, Single Sided, Compilation, Etched. Released May 8, 2020 (France). View Images
Featuring Memphis Minnie, Geeshie Wiley, Mississippi John Hurt, Ed Bell, Furry Lewis, Tom Dickson, Robert Wilkins, Julius Daniels, Blind Blake, Luke Jordan, Buddy Moss, Tommy Johnson, Walter Vinson, Bo Carter, Otis Harris, and Lil' Son Jaconson