Irene Scruggs (December 7, 1901 – July 20, 1981) was an American Piedmont blues and country blues singer, who was also billed as Chocolate Brown and Dixie Nolan. She recorded songs such as "My Back to the Wall" and "Good Grindin'" and worked with Clarence Williams, Joe "King" Oliver, Lonnie Johnson, Little Brother Montgomery, Blind Blake, Albert Nicholas, and Kid Ory. Scruggs achieved some success but today is largely forgotten.
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| King Oliver |
Born Irene Smith, she originated in rural Mississippi, but it is believed that she was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Mary Lou Williams recalled Scruggs being a singer of some standing when Williams traveled to St. Louis in vaudeville. Scruggs was hired by the revue company, and her career there sometimes outshone her work as a recording artist and nightclub singer. This led to opportunities to sing with a number of Joe "King" Oliver's bands, which played in St. Louis in the mid-1920s. Scruggs was later accompanied by Blind Blake. In her live shows her song "Itching Heel" provided the platform for interplay between the Scruggs's singing and Blake's guitar work. "He don't do nothing but play on his old guitar," Scruggs sang, "While I'm busting suds out in the white folks' yard."
She first recorded for Okeh Records in 1924, with the pianist Clarence Williams. In 1926 she renewed her working association with Oliver. Two songs written by Scruggs, "Home Town Blues" and "Sorrow Valley Blues", were recorded by Oliver. She recorded again for Okeh in 1927, this time with Lonnie Johnson. Scruggs formed her own band in the late 1920s and performed regularly in the St. Louis area.
Using the pseudonym Chocolate Brown she recorded further tracks with Blind Blake. To avoid contractual problems she was also billed as Dixie Nolan. By the early 1930s, Little Brother Montgomery took over as her accompanist on recordings and in touring. Scruggs also sang and recorded sexually explicit material. "Good Grindin'" and "Must Get Mine in Front" (1930) were the better-known examples of her dirty blues, and some of her work appeared in The Nasty Blues, published by the Hal Leonard Corporation. Scruggs recorded only a small batch of songs, and her recording career finished around 1935.
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| Irene Scruggs in London c.1952 |
In the 1940s, Irene Scruggs and her daughter, the dancer Baby Leazar Scruggs joined many black artists and thinkers who had become expatriates during the twentieth century, like dancer Josephine Baker and writer James Baldwin. Scruggs continued singing in Europe, and some of the more well-known performances from her later years are in a set of mid-century BBC recordings. After living in Paris and London, she died in the historic city of Trier, West Germany in 1981, aged 79.
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| Baby Scruggs |
Baby continued living in Trier and with the help of a social worker was finally put into a senior citizen’s home at Trierweiler (a couple of miles outside of Trier) in 2008 intil her death on Jan. 16, 2019 (only 4 weeks before her 99th birthday!)
(Edited from Wikipedia & Sunday Blues)
PHOTOGRAPHS
As well as the grainy head shot used on her Document records, there seems to be only one other photograph taken of Irene Scruggs when she visited London 1952/3. There are two other head shots one being used on covers by digital download platforms which belongs to a different unrelated Irene Scruggs from Cleveland and another of little Miss Cornshucks in a straw hat used as a picture on YouTube which others assume is Irene when it isn’t!. There are also a few of her daughter Baby Scruggs which are given the mothers name. Don’t you just love the Internet!