Biography
Bertha Idaho left behind a recording legacy as a classic blues singer that stands in sharp contrast to the agricultural abundance suggested by her state namesake. Across 1928 and 1929 she committed just four sides to disc, a sequence whose titles, when placed in order, unfold like a film-noir scenario. The scene opens on “Down on Pennsylvania Avenue,” moves through the double-entendre action of “You’ve Got the Right Eye, But You’re Peeping at the Wrong Keyhole” and “Move It on Out of Here,” and closes on the morbid terrain of “Graveyard Love”—a track still cited by those who argue that rap, punk, and heavy metal did not invent controversial subject matter in popular song. In the closing years of the 1920s, writers such as Tom Delaney supplied this strain of material, perhaps shaped by his own childhood in underfunded orphanages. Delaney persuaded Idaho to document a prostitute’s rock-bottom fee on “Down on Pennsylvania Avenue” with the couplet: “Now if you want good lovin’ and want it cheap, just drop around about the middle of the week./When the broad is broke and can’t pay rent, get good lovin’ boys, for 15 cents.” The same songwriter supplied comparable numbers to his principal associate Ethel Waters and to other singers including Alberta Hunter and Bessie Smith. Because Idaho’s entire discography consists of these two brief sessions, her name registers only as a fleeting reference in blues history when set beside Waters, Hunter, or the various Smiths who defined the classic era. That very scarcity, combined with the unusual surname, apparently prompted John Fahey to weave Idaho into the fictionalized history he supplied for the Blind Joe Death album. The slow recirculation of her performances through later reissues, spectral yet persistent, exemplifies the affirmative existential stance often associated with such rediscoveries. Still, the precise reason Fahey singled her out from the countless other dimly remembered blues and old-time figures remains unclear. Location-based nicknames or surnames are common enough in the genre that enthusiasts browsing the blues bins have been known to map imaginary road trips linking Georgia Tom, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Bertha Idaho.