Christine Kittrell: The Matriarch of Columbus Blues (1951-1965)

Christine Kittrell was born on August 11, 1929, into a musical family in Nashville, and decided that singing would be her life's work after singing in church, and listening to records by Vela Johnson, Dinah Washington, Billie Holliday and Bessie Smith. During the '40s and early '50s, Kittrell toured extensively, and recorded for Tennessee, Republic, Federal, King and Vee-Jay Records over her career. During the summer of 1952, a little independent label based in Nashville called Tennessee Records released a blues recording called 'Sittin' Here Drinkin'' /'I Ain't Nothing But a Fool'. In 1952, Little Richard played piano on one of her songs, 'Lord Have Mercy (I'm So Lonely)'. Christine then moved to Republic Records, also in Nashville, and recorded with the Gay Crosse Band, who had in their number a young tenor player called John Coltrane. Christine was starting to rack up sales of over 20,000 per single. Around this time, she toured regularly. DJ Gene Norman organised a show with The Robins, Christine Kittrell, Earl Bostic, and The Flairs at the Embassy Ballroom in LA, and to tour California in March. Other West Coast tours would follow, with "Fats" Domino, Earl Bostic, Paul Williams, John Coltrane and more. Success as a national R&B artist seemed imminent. At this point in 1954, Christine decided to return to gospel music. She moved to Columbus Ohio in 1962, to make a new home. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller sought her out and wrote the song 'I'm a Woman' for her, which she recorded on Vee-Jay along with some other, but none of them sold well, and she returned to her gospel once more. In the mid '60s, she went on a Southeast Asian tour where she sang for the troops in Vietnam. She stayed there for 8 1/2 months, intending to stay longer. The tour was terminated, almost literally, when Christine was wounded by shrapnel in a Viet-Cong incident. She made a come-back in the '80s and spent her remaining few years working with a beautification group, the Linden Community in Action. Kittrell was inducted into the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame in 1998 and died on 19th December 2001 from emphysema, aged 72. http://boppinbob.multiply.com/, http://koti.mbnet.fi/

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