KNOXVILLE, TN—The Knoxville Museum of Art’s Alive After Five live music series presents “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues”, a tribute to Ida Cox, featuring Robin Rogers & The Hot Band on Friday, February 26, from 6:00 – 8:30 pm.
Known as “The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues” during the Jazz Era of the 1920s, Ida Cox was born on February 25, 1894 in Toccoa, Georgia, and lived her last twenty-two years in Knoxville, where she is also buried. While she didn’t attain the degree of lasting fame as her contemporaries, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, she was equally popular as a touring artist. She managed her own touring company, Raisin’ Cain, and wrote many of the songs she performed and recorded, including the classic “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues”. She was also one of the very few blues singers of the 1920s who managed to continue her career into the 1930s and 1940s. She recorded her last album, “Blues for Rampart Street”, in 1961 with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in New York City. She died of cancer in 1967 and is buried in New Grey Cemetery.
Music has been Robin Rogers' consuming passion ever since her days as a teenaged street singer. In the late sixties when America's youth was "rediscovering the Blues," Robin Rogers was "living the Blues." As a runaway teen trying to escape a troubled home, she made her way to cities like Richmond, Virginia; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; and Coconut Grove, Florida. As a juvenile, she served time in reform school and later became addicted to drugs and alcohol. She eventually learned to play guitar and began accompanying herself. Robin performed on the streets, at parties and coffee houses for food and tips, setting the stage for the emergence of an independent, strong-willed spirit and charismatic singer. Her goal was to make a living performing music, and this she has done for over 30 years. She became drug and alcohol free in 1989 and moved to North Carolina in 1990. In 2004, she reached the finals of the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. In 2009, she was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year at the Blues Music Awards and she won the Best Female Artist at the Blues Blast Awards.

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