Daughter of All Women
by Sue Barrett
My mother was a lady, my mother was a whore/
My mother was a scullery maid who swept a kitchen floor/
I'm the daughter of all women and I've borne all women's pains/
And the blood of every woman runs inside this woman's veins
(Madeline Davis — 'Daughter of All Women')
 Madeline Davis was born in Buffalo, New York and worked her way through college by singing in coffee houses and doing classical work with local chorales. In 1972, she both became the USA's first openly lesbian elected delegate to a major political convention (Democratic/McGovern) and co-taught the country's first course on lesbianism (State University of New York at Buffalo). Her 45 rpm record, 'Stone Wall Nation'/'From the Steps of the Capitol, 1971', released in 1972, was one of the first openly lesbian recordings. In 1978, Madeline and Liz Kennedy founded the Buffalo Women's Oral History Project and researched their 1993 book, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community — subsequently winning a Lambda Literary Award (1993), the American Sociological Association's Jesse Barnard Award (1994) and the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists' Ruth Benedict Award (1994). When she retired in 1995, Madeline had spent 30 years as a librarian/conservator for the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library System. In 2001 she founded the Buffalo GLBT Archives and remains its Director. The Archives Board recently honored her by renaming the institution, the Madeline Davis GLBT Archives of Western NY.
When, and how, did you become a performer?
I have sung for most of my life. I remember being in the chorus in elementary school and singing the solos for Xmas shows. Good job for a nice Jewish girl. I started going to beatnik coffee houses in Buffalo in about 1957 and eventually became a part time waitress while I was going to college. One of the performers, Gene Michaels, heard me singing. He asked if I would like to sing a song during his set. As a lover of old English ballads I had memorized many and nervously chose to sing the 'Ballad of Mary Hamilton' while he played guitar for me. The audience was very responsive and eventually we started singing duets. He gave me my first real opportunity to perform as a real singer in front of a real audience. Gene and I are once again in contact after 50 years!
In 1959 I took a waitress job for the summer on Wellesley Island in the Thousand Islands with my friend Margie. We were bored. My mom sent us my uncle's little Mexican guitar and we bought a Burl Ives book of American songs with chords in the back. We both learned about five major chords and three minor chords and played for each other and the waitresses and busboys. When the summer ended we hitchhiked to NY City and got jobs singing in Greenwich Village coffee houses. We sang at the Bitter End and had beers with Bob Dylan. It was a very exciting time.
When I returned to Buffalo I sang regularly in coffee houses and in the early '60s started coming out and writing lesbian music. It was very well received and for some reason, being accepted as an out lesbian never surprised me. Once I came out I was out everywhere and luckily hardly anyone gave me grief over it. I suppose it was expected that a beatnik who played in dark little "dens of iniquity", smoked dope, and wrote poetry would do other "weird" things as well!
Can you tell us about 'Stonewall Nation'?
I wrote 'Stonewall Nation' after having marched in the first gay rights march on the state capitol in Albany NY in the spring of 1971. By default I became the speaker for Upstate NY women when someone pulled me out of the crowd and said, "You're it". The experience was so scary and so profound that I wrote about it. The song was born, as was a poem called 'From the Steps of the Capitol, 1971'. The Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, of which I was an officer, said that they would produce a 45 rpm recording of both pieces and would sell it for a small profit. We pressed 500 copies. It was my first recording except for some demo jazz/rock tapes recorded by a band I worked with in the late '60s. Craig Rodwell of the Oscar Wilde Bookstore on Christopher St told me he played 'Stonewall Nation' in the shop every June during Pride. It was quite an honor.
At the same time my recording was produced, Maxine Feldman produced 'Angry Atthis'. We met on the pages of The Advocate where both recordings were reviewed.
How do you go about writing your songs?
I would put this in the past since I hardly write music any more. When I did write songs, most of the time they came all in one piece. There was little planning before hand. They came out of incident or a realization or a sudden onslaught of feeling. I often was not holding a guitar or sitting at the piano. Rather I would be in a car and might have to pull over. Or in a waiting room staring at a painting. I would write out most of the song and then put it away until I could play and sing it. It was then that I would add or change lines. In the earliest days of writing I felt like I was an instrument and the songs wrote themselves with my hand. I don't mean to sound to woo-woo about it but they came out so rapidly that they didn't feel like a product of my own rumination but that they pre-existed and just appeared on the paper. It has always been an eerie feeling.
Why do you write about lesbian lives?
"They" say, write about what you know. This is what I know. This is the world I live in. Being a lesbian is at the root of most of what I have endeavored and accomplished in my life. Everything I am and do is hung on the structure of my love of women and my compassion for both my sisters and my brothers in the movement.
Can you tell us a bit about some of your songs that tell of lesbian lives?
Most of my songs have been love songs. Even the ones that speak of anger and frustration are tied to both the individual women I have loved and the great body of lesbian and gay life and our movement in the world. I sing about the thrill of finding a new love, the warmth of an ongoing relationship, the sadness of ending and loss and the way in which we all pick ourselves up and go on. Sometimes we have to repeat the cycle a number of times to get it right. But in the end, the story is about how women have dedicated our lives to each other.
'Daughter of All Women' speaks of the universality of the lesbian experience in a straight world. It also honors what has been passed down to us by our lineage of strong women and looks to the future in which we pass on what we have experienced and learned.
In the 1960s and 1970s, to what extent were people able to access openly lesbian recordings?
There was little overt lesbian music to access in the '60s. Of course there were always rumors of popular singers being lesbians, I recall Timmi Yuro. And then there were the blues songs that were ambiguous but indicative of women loving women. It was not until the early '70s when Alix Dobkin put out Lavender Jane Loves Women that there was a truly clear statement that lesbians were out in the world and could not only buy records but could make them. I bought one of the first editions of that recording with its paper cover glued on the front, and played it over and over. I still have it. It confirmed for me and my friends that we were not alone in the world and that we could and should be celebrated. It is truly a precious gem.
As a performer, what has been your experience of homophobia?
In some ways I was both smart and stupid. I played for lesbian and gay audiences. That meant that, because I was part of a very small minority of gay and lesbian performers I was very much appreciated. On the other hand, because I chose not to pursue music as a full time profession I both avoided situations in which I would experience homophobia and also did not take the chance on having a real career as a lesbian/feminist singer. Instead I worked for gay rights locally and nationally and finally became a writer and historian and now a GLBT archivist. Although I sometimes think wistfully about what I might have done, I am very happy with the choices I made.
What seems to make people more receptive, or less receptive, to songs about lesbians?
There is something about honesty and warmth that wins them over. I have always assumed that being a lesbian was just fine. I think if you walk in with that attitude, non-defensive, presuming the best, often the people interviewing you are infected by your sense of security. If they have chosen to present me, interview me, listen to me, they must think there's something good about what I do. I just assume that, act that way, and mostly it works. I did run into one radio commentator who challenged my validity. I made as eloquent a statement as I could about women loving women; then I told him he was an asshole and I walked out. I choose not to spend much time and energy on people who don't want to have a real conversation and learn from it. If all they want to do is listen to themselves talk, I let them do it .... alone.
In the 1960s and 1970s, to what extent were there risks associated with being an openly lesbian performer and/or attending a concert/buying a recording by an openly lesbian performer?
Many lesbian performers ran into hecklers and even picketers. You simply have to push through it and build up calluses and the strength to fight. Most concert goers have had little to fear, in my experience. Perhaps others will have more to say on this topic. If a store carries a recording they want to sell it. In the early days of lesbian music most recordings were carried by women's book stores rather than by major chains. So here is where we found music that spoke to our lives. It is only recently that we have become a marketable commodity.
What advice do you have for emerging performers?
Practice really hard. It is no longer as easy as it was to command GLBT audiences and it never was easy to play to straights. There are so many fine performers out there that the competition is truly fierce. You need talent, finely honed ability and really great material to be able to compete. It's a very different world for lesbian musicians than the one I worked in. Today I'm not sure I'd have the stamina for it. Of course I'm 67 so that answers a few questions!
How important is it for performers to sing about lesbian lives?
It remains vital. Because singing about our lives is not only entertainment but an inherently political act, and, because we are not yet full citizens or in some places not even considered fully human, it is of utmost importance that women continue singing out about our lives. We need to push the boundaries, perform "in your face" material and follow the motto that we're here, we're queer, get used to it.
For medical reasons, you no longer perform. How has not being able to perform affected your life?
It has been a great sadness for me. About four years ago I was on a respirator for over two weeks and continued to be hospitalized for over a month. The breathing tubes bruised my vocal cords. I used to have almost a three octave range. Now I am relegated to a pleasant but somewhat weak tenor. It is probably a good thing that I never became a full time musician. Having to give up not only a great joy but a lifetime career would have been even more of a tragedy. Still, it was so much a part of me, my identity and my pleasure. Sometimes when I sleep, I dream about singing in my old voice and wake up crying.
Which, if any, of your recordings are still available?
I'm afraid all I have is a few copies of my cassette tape, Daughter of All Women. Perhaps some day, someone, maybe even I, will consider re-releasing it on CD as a memento of the old days. I also have a pretty good concert tape that might be able to be edited for a CD. But, I've been so busy doing other things over the years that it might only be a dream.
What have you been doing over the past year? And what's coming up in the next year?
In 2001 I founded the Buffalo GLBT Archives. The Board of Directors recently renamed it the Madeline Davis GLBT Archives of Western NY. I'm very proud of it and as its continuing director I'm working very hard to make it a large and viable collection. It's been a lot of fun pulling together people's memorabilia, records of organizations, publications, mementos including t-shirts, buttons, flags, mugs, awards, books, tapes etc. We are outgrowing our space rapidly and the collection will probably go to a local university. This is and has been the last major political act of my life. It is ultimately satisfying.
Is there anything else that you would like to add?
I've been working in the Movement for almost 40 years. I've been a part of almost every organization in the area. I've acted with HAG theatre, the only all lesbian theater company in the country. I was the first out lesbian elected delegate to a national political convention - 1972. McGovern. I taught the first Lesbianism course in the US. I co-authored with Liz Kennedy the first working class lesbian history book Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. I have marched and debated and sung and picketed, and published. I have pushed a broom, arranged seats, washed dishes, and cleaned up after meetings. I have spoken and listened and written and read. It has been a busy and wonderful ride. I have been very fortunate to have participated in a life of political activism and a life that has been long enough to see the wonders we have accomplished so far and to anticipate those yet to come.
Discography
'Stone Wall Nation'/'From the Steps of the Capitol, 1971' (45 rpm) (1972)
Daughter of All Women (tape) (1983)
Publications
Madeline D Davis & Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy — Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (1993)
More Info: http://www.queermusicheritage.us/nov2000.html
MADELINE DAVIS was interviewed as part of the article, 'Out There, Every Day: Singing of the Lives of Lesbians, Dykes, Queers, Gay Women...'.
Read the article and other interviews (Skim, Gretchen Phillips (Girls in the Nose; Two Nice Girls), Ripley Caine, Nedra Johnson, Bernie Bankrupt (Lesbians on Ecstasy), Ferron, God-des (God-des and She) and June Millington).
SUE BARRETT is an Australian music writer, with a special interest in women in music. She witnessed "the incident" at a Cris Williamson/Tret Fure/Judy Small concert that prompted Judy to write a coda for the song, 'Lesbian Chic'.
c. 2007
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