Liz Mandeville is Making a Scene
Making a Scene Presents an Interview of Liz Mandeville
Mandeville grew up in an arts-filled home in a musical family in Wisconsin. Her father sang folk songs and played the guitar, and her mother was a teacher and theater buff. Her father taught her to sing and paint, and she started playing the guitar at age 16. She first played professionally in coffee houses around Wisconsin. She moved to Chicago in 1979 to study theater and started going to Chicago clubs to observe and study singing, playing, and audience responses. During this time she met her future husband (and later ex-husband) Willie Greeson (known as Willie Phillips), who played in the Legendary Blues Band. He introduced her to the Chicago blues and R&B world. She learned from local artists Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers and Kansas City Red at the Chicago club B.L.U.E.S. on Halstead. After a bandleader in a Chicago jazz club tried to publicly humiliate her by accusing her of being a blues singer, she became determined to study music. She graduated with honors from Columbia College with a degree in music. She also studied voice for eight years with baritone Doug Susu-Mago, who taught her to use her voice as an instrument and to regard her presentation as an athletic performance.