#birtha

[bamboo92fm]

Birtha, All-Female 70s Rock Band

[zippocreed501]

Birtha - Too Much Woman (For a Henpecked Man) (1972)

[hobbyarchivist]

The Daughters of Eve on fellow all-girl bands, plus Etta James!

(These are some outtakes from my interview with members of The Daughters of Eve, who were a 1960s, Chicago based, all-girl rock band, known best for their viral hit 'Hey Lover')

Did you know any of the girls from the band Birtha?

DEBI: Yes, I knew Liver, the drummer. Olivia Favela.

I was going to ask you about her, because online no one really seems to know what happened to her.

DEBI: I ran into her many years ago, probably in the early/mid 80s I’d say. I ran into her at a party. We were talking after if she still played. She said no, she was selling cars at a dealership. I was telling her how much I enjoyed her playing. She was a left handed drummer and Birtha had a left handed rhythm section.

The bass player, Rosemary Butler— she was a great singer. They all sang, great vocals. Rosemary sang with everybody, you name it. Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne. She was Jackson Browne’s background singer for years until he decided to not tour anymore. She teaches voice now. She’s great.

Rosemary and Liver were both left handed. They were a great rhythm section, I really liked that band. I think the guitar player passed away and the keyboard player, I’m not sure what happened to her, but it was nice meeting Liver. She said she wasn’t going to play anymore, she had given it up. She had to make a living. I don’t know what her personal life was like, but I was glad I had that brief conversation with her at the party.

Really good drummer though, boy, I liked her style. I thought, ‘How can she do it left handed?’. That was really interesting.

Do you have any memories of Fanny?

DEBI: I never saw them live. I was always on tour, remember that, in several other all-girl bands that traveled on the road. Whenever they’d be playing, I’d be playing so I never got to see them live.

I’m friends with June Millington and Jean Millington, the two sisters. Alice is a pretty good drummer, but we had different styles. They’re still all friends, which is nice. I don’t know what she does now. Nickey Barclay, the keyboard player who did a lot of the singing, she was really good. But, I'm very close to June, and she and her sister were the founders of the band. They were called The Svelts. They had all kinds of different names.

They were out here in California, but I believe they didn’t start until the mid to late '60s. They actually came about in 1969 when I first came out to California. Girl musicians were getting more popular at that time.

I was in another all-girl band; we were a show band and we would travel and we made money. Rooms were free, we got good salaries and I couldn’t pass it up and Im still friends with those girls too! I stayed in touch with almost every band I knew or got involved with.

Fanny, nice group of girls. I met most of the girl musicians out here, I played in other girl bands that were really good.

You said you played with Etta James?

MARSHA: Yeah, I was playing in LA, I had moved to LA and was playing in a club with a guy who wrote a song that she recorded when she was real young; she recorded ‘Dance with me Henry’, that was Richard Berry. I was playing with him, then she came in and saw us and said she wanted me to play with her.

It was fun, we did a jazz festival in South America. That’s another thing, I made great money when I played with her, but there was such huge gaps between the times we would even play. We did San Fransisco, but maybe there were six weeks, a month. It’s almost discouraging. Its great while you're playing, but they're a lot of gaps in between.

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

Reasons why the effects of sexism throughout history, in this case music history and rock music history in particular, is such a burden on future generations: when I listen to this song, I desperately wonder about the band, 'How many takes did they do for this song, particularly where Liver [Olivia "Liver" Favela, lead vocalist on this song] goes into the fucking whistle register!!? Or did they record it live? Did they overdub the vocals?'

Knowledge (as in, answers to those questions) like that ^ is regularly recorded and shared when it pertains to music by men. It is very rarely recorded, and thus not shared, when it comes to music by women and especially where bands of all women are concerned!!. And when it comes to history, if there's no one left alive who was there, who could accurately answer those questions (and then share them publicly, freely), then that knowledge has effectively been lost - erased, actually.

If you ever wonder why the fuck sexism in music (or any field that is tainted by sexism) matters at all, it's because it leads not just to the erasure of art itself but to the erasure of knowledge ABOUT the art which can explain, inspire, and influence similar and new ways of making art in the future. Sexism is a biased template that hinders invention, inventiveness, and creativity.

[dodinaslesavage]

Birtha - Rock Me (1973)

[thequeensofnoise]

I can't stop the madness running through my head

[takealittlepieceoftheirhearts]

Cool cover!

[realmofstelo]

Decided to check out Rankin Bass’ forgotten Christmas special, Cricket on the Hearth. Just out of morbid curiosity is all. I think the hi light for me was the singing thicc nightclub cat. XD