Battle of the Blues Divas: Event History
Facts
- Southern California Blues Society (SCBS) was a Los Angeles-area nonprofit founded in 1982 and, by its own account, a Blues Foundation affiliate from around 1999; the organization is now defunct.
- "Battle of the Blues Divas" was one of several recurring, "battle"-format community events SCBS ran, alongside an LA Juke Joint night, a Six String Showdown, and a Battle of the 20 Blues Bands regional qualifier.
This page is an archive entry maintained by the Southern California Blues Journal, an independent fan guide to the Southern California blues scene. We are not affiliated with, and do not claim to be, the original Southern California Blues Society (SCBS), the Los Angeles-based nonprofit that ran community blues events in this region for decades before its website, and apparently the organization itself, went offline. This page preserves the record that an event called "Battle of the Blues Divas" existed and recurred as part of SCBS's community programming.
SCBS described itself, through archived listings and its own event pages, as a volunteer-run organization founded in 1982 that became an affiliate of The Blues Foundation (the Memphis-based nonprofit behind the International Blues Challenge) around 1999. Alongside fundraising concerts, the group appears to have run a rotating slate of themed community nights, including an LA Juke Joint evening, a "Six String Showdown" guitar competition, a "Battle of the 20 Blues Bands" regional qualifier, and this Battle of the Blues Divas series. The "battle" format, pitting performers against one another for an audience and/or a panel of judges, is a common structure used by regional blues societies across the country both to generate excitement and to raise modest funds for the society's operations and for sending a local act to compete at the IBC in Memphis.
A "diva" showcase built specifically around women vocalists fits into a much longer and well-documented thread in blues history. Women were foundational to the genre from its earliest commercially recorded era: Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Memphis Minnie were among the music's first stars, and that lineage continued through Big Mama Thornton, Koko Taylor (who was widely known as the "Queen of the Blues" until her death in 2009), Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, and Shemekia Copeland, who was formally given Koko Taylor's crown as the "New Queen of the Blues" at the 2009 Chicago Blues Festival. Despite that pedigree, women performers have historically had to fight harder than their male counterparts for marquee billing on blues stages, which is part of why local societies around the country have organized events specifically spotlighting female vocalists.
For the dated installment of this series, see our Battle of the Blues Divas 2010 entry, and browse our photo archive for images we have gathered and attributed responsibly.
