Biography
Long before employment crossed most minds, Di Anne Price already collected a weekly wage. Her piano work began near age four in church services and soon moved into blues clubs. Within a few years she earned money from those performances and cut a tape at nine. Sippie Wallace, Memphis Minnie, and Billie Holiday already shaped her direction then. A Memphis, TN native, she later held a steady post as social director at a nursing home yet stayed active in blues circles by appearing regularly with her backing group the Uptown All-Stars at local venues. Both parents immersed themselves in music, her father singing and playing guitar while her mother wrote lyrics; Price and her sisters all played piano. Her mother supported nighttime impulses, letting the child rise from bed to play until dawn. In winter she continued for hours wearing gloves, coat, and scarf, her kittens often joining in song. That same streak surfaced elsewhere, once when she concealed kittens in her pocketbook and smuggled them into church for choir practice. The animals slipped out, settled beneath the lectern, and sang through the minister’s sermon. During junior high she performed with the group the Wildcats. Captain Phil McGee & the Hottennazz came later. She appears on the 1996 cassette Wild Women alongside several Uptown All-Stars members, drummer Tom Lonardo, saxophonist Jim Spake, and Scott Lane, with occasional trumpet from Richard Boyington and bass from Tim Goodwin.
Albums
