Coleman won the Orville Gibson Award for "Best Blues Guitarist, Female" in 2001,[3] and was nominated for a W.C.

Coleman's Blind Pig debut, I Can't Lose (1997), was an album of ballads, blues stories, guitar playing and singing.

Her version of Billie Holiday's "Fine and Mellow" was heard on college and public radio stations around the U.S.

Time Bomb (2007) featured three women blues musicians: Coleman, Sue Foley and Roxanne Potvin.

[5] Coleman died unexpectedly on April 12, 2018, in a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, from complications brought on by bronchitis and pneumonia.