Another
of the inventors of the Holiness sound (you may know it better
as rock’n’roll), Arizona Juanita Dranes was a blind
Church of God In Christ pianist who sang and played what we would
probably call “barrelhouse” piano. They didn’t
call it barrelhouse in sanctified church where it was born, you
can be damn sure of that. She played tent meetings and revivals
with the Reverend F.W. McGee (who was also accompanied by Michelle
Shocked’s beloved Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her mother Katie
Bell Nubin), recorded sixteen songs, and vanished, leaving those
funky chords clattering in the East Texas air behind her, to be
used in barrelhousing, in Western Swing, in honkytonk, and in
sanctified church to this day.