AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SPRING, 2016
VOLUME TWO NUMBER THREE
WAYNE SHORTER
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
LEO SMITH
March 26-April 1
AHMAD JAMAL
April 2-8
DIONNE WARWICK
April 9-15
LEE MORGAN
April 16-22
BILL DIXON
April 23-29
SAM COOKE
April 30-May 6
MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS
May 7-13
BILLY HARPER
May 14-20
SISTER ROSETTA THARPE
May 21-27
QUINCY JONES
May 28-June 3
BESSIE SMITH
June 4-10
ROBERT JOHNSON
June 11-17
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/bessie-smith-mn0000054707/biography
Bessie Smith
(1894-1937)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
http://www.biography.com/people/bessie-smith-9486520
Bessie Smith Biography
Singer (1894–1937)
Jazz and blues vocalist Bessie Smith's powerful, soulful voice won her countless fans and earned her the title "Empress of the Blues.”
Synopsis
Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 15, 1894. She began to sing at a young age and in 1923 signed a contract with Columbia Records. Soon she was among the highest-paid black performers of her time with hits like "Downhearted Blues." By the end of the 1920s, however, her popularity had lessened, though she continued to perform and made new recordings at the start of the Swing Era. Her comeback and life were cut short from an automobile accident outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi, with Smith dying from her injuries on September 26, 1937.
Early Life
Bessie Smith was born on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was one of seven children. Her father, a Baptist minister, died soon after her birth, leaving her mother to raise her and her siblings. Around 1906, her mother and two of her brothers died and Smith and her remaining siblings were raised by their aunt. It was around this time that Smith began to perform as a street singer, accompanied on the guitar by one of her younger brothers. In 1912, Smith began performing as a dancer in the Moses Stokes minstrel show, and soon thereafter in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, of which blues vocalist Ma Rainey was a member. Rainey took Smith under her wing, and over the next decade Smith continued to perform at various theaters and on the vaudeville circuit.
The Empress of the Blues
By the early 1920s, Smith had settled down and was living in Philadelphia, and in 1923 she met and married a man named Jack Gee. That same year, she was discovered by a representative from Columbia Records, with whom she signed a contract and made her first song recordings. Among them was a track titled "Downhearted Blues," which was wildly popular and sold an estimated 800,000 copies, propelling Smith into the blues spotlight. With her rich, powerful voice, Smith soon became a successful recording artist and toured extensively. Going forward with an idea presented by her brother and business manager Clarence, Smith eventually bought a custom railroad car for her traveling troupe to travel and sleep in.
In her recording career, Bessie Smith worked with many important jazz performers, such as saxophonist Sidney Bechet and pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson. With Johnson, she recorded one of her most famous songs, "Backwater Blues." Smith also collaborated with the legendary jazz artist Louis Armstrong on several tunes, including "Cold in Hand Blues" and "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle." By the end of the 1920s, Smith was the highest-paid black performer of her day, and had earned herself the title "Empress of the Blues."
Decline and Revival
However, at the height of her success, Bessie Smith’s career began to flounder, due in part to the financial ravages of the Great Depression and a change in cultural mores. In 1929 she and Jack Gee permanently separated, and by the end of 1931 Smith had stopped working with Columbia altogether. However, ever the dedicated performer, Smith adapted her repertoire and continued to tour. In 1933, Smith was contacted by producer John Hammond to make new recordings, which hinted at the coming Swing Era.
Death and Legacy
Over the next few years, Smith continued to perform. However, on September 26, 1937, Smith was en route to a show in Memphis, Tennessee with her companion of many years, Richard Morgan, when he sideswiped a truck and lost control of their car. Smith was thrown from the vehicle and badly injured. She died of her wounds in a Clarkdale, Mississippi hospital. She was 43.
Smith’s funeral was held in Philadelphia a week later, with thousands coming to pay their respects. She was buried in Mount Lawn Cemetery in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania.
Since her death, Bessie Smith’s music continues to win over new fans, and collections of her songs have continued to sell extremely well over the years. She has been a primary influence for countless female vocalists—including Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin—and has been immortalized in numerous works. A comprehensive, acclaimed bio on her life—Bessie, by journalist Chris Albertson—was published in 1972 and expanded in 2003. An HBO film loosely based on the book is slated to air in 2015, with Queen Latifah (who also executive produced the project) portraying Smith and Mo'Nique playing Ma Rainey.
http://blog.oup.com/2015/05/bessie-smith-empress-blues/
Bessie Smith: the Empress of the Blues
by Scott Yanow
May 24, 2015
The filming and recent airing of the HBO film Bessie, which stars Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, serves as a perfect excuse to look back at the music and life of the woman who was accurately billed as the Empress Of The Blues.
When Bessie Smith made her recording debut in 1923, she was not the first blues singer to record. Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920 had been such a major hit that it began a blues craze with scores of African-American female singers being documented. While many were quickly forgotten, Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter were the biggest discoveries before Smith finally appeared on record. She was also not the first jazz singer to record, being preceded by most notably Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike) and Marion Harris. However Bessie Smith soon became widely recognized as the most important female blues and jazz singer of the 1920s, and her impact can still be felt nearly a century later.
A listen to some of Bessie Smith’s recordings from 1923 and early 1924 can be a revelation. The recording quality is primitive and much of her accompaniment, even from such pianists as Fletcher Henderson and Clarence Williams, is barely adequate. And yet Smith ignores everything else and sings with power, sincerity and passion that still communicate very well to today’s listeners. It is not just the volume of her voice or her general sassiness and strength. There is an intensity to her interpretations that lets listeners know that she will not stand for any nonsense, that she is a strong independent woman, and that she is a force to be reckoned with.
Bessie Smith Photographed by Carl Van Vechten. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on 15 April 1894. Not only did she grow up poor and black in the South but she lost both of her parents before her tenth birthday. Smith sang in the streets after school, gaining important experience while raising some money for her family. In 1912 when she was 18, she joined the Moses Stock Troupe as a dancer and an occasional singer. She traveled with the company throughout the South and learned about show business and life from their main vocalist Ma Rainey who is considered the first blues singer. Smith switched her emphasis from popular songs to the blues during this period.
Bessie Smith’s singing talents were very obvious as she entered her twenties and worked with other troupes. Her charismatic performances were often hypnotic not only due to the power of her voice but in the directness and truth of the words that she sang. Although the first wave of the blues craze somehow missed her, in 1923 she had her chance. Her very first released recording, Alberta Hunter’s “Downhearted Blues,” was a major hit that eventually sold 800,000 copies. During 1923-33 Smith recorded 160 songs and those often-timeless recordings are Bessie Smith’s musical legacy.
In her recordings, Bessie Smith (as with virtually all of the singers of the era) did not sing directly about racism. Her label (Columbia) would not have released anything that could offend whites in the South. But while many of her recordings dealt with the ups and downs of romances, she also sang about the difficulties of poverty, being treated poorly by men, and even about a few topical events such as floods (“Backwater Blues”). While she did not mince words, one always felt that she would overcome her difficulties. There were also bits of humor in some of the lyrics along with an occasional more light-hearted and jazz-oriented piece. Among the songs that she turned into classics were “’Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do” (which later on was a hit for both Billie Holiday and Jimmy Witherspoon), “Careless Love,” “Backwater Blues,” “Muddy Water,” “Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair,” “Mean Old Bed Bug Blues,” “Empty Bed Blues,” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Both the recording quality and the quality of her sidemen improved by 1925. Louis Armstrong on cornet holds his own with Bessie Smith (and vice versa) on “Careless Love” and “St. Louis Blues,” the superb stride pianist James P. Johnson is perfect on a series of late 1920s recordings, and other favorite players included cornetist Joe Smith and trombonist Charlie Green. Smith also starred in the 1929 short film St. Louis Blues, her only movie appearance.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bessie Smith was able to adapt to changing musical and social conditions. She survived both the end of the blues craze and the Depression although the latter and the collapse of the record industry resulted in her only having one record date after 1931. She musically reinvented herself from a blues singer into a bluesy jazz vocalist, a move that unfortunately was not documented on records. In 1935 Bessie sang at the Apollo Theater and appeared in several shows, gearing herself for what would certainly have been a major comeback during the swing era.
It took the tragic car accident of 26 September 1937, which resulted in her death at the age of 43, to stop her — but nothing, not even the passing of 90 years, lessens the impact of the recordings of the Empress of the Blues.
Scott Yanow is a jazz reviewer, historian, and author of many books on jazz, including The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide, The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide, and Jazz: A Regional Exploration.
See more at:
http://blog.oup.com/2015/05/bessie-smith-empress-blues/#sthash.GcUU394m.dpuf
1910 US Census, Chattanooga, Hamilton, Tennessee, Ward 7, Enumeration District 0065, Sheet 2B, Family #48
Albertson, Chris (2003). Bessie (revised and expanded ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09902-9.
Albertson, 2003, p. 11.
Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books. p. 12. ISBN 1-85868-255-X.
Albertson, 2003, pp. 14–15.
Oliver, Paul. "Bessie Smith", in Kernfield, Barry, ed. (2002). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed. Vol. 3. London: MacMillan. p. 604.
Albertson, 2003, p. 80.
"Legends Series- Bessie Smith: The Empress of the Blues". World Music Network. 3 June 2015. http://www.worldmusic.net/legends-series/bessie-smith-the-empress-of-the-blues/
Chris Albertson, Chris. CD booklet. Bessie Smith, The Complete Recordings Vol. 2. Columbia COL 468767 2.
“Hit on Radio”, Chicago Defender, October 6, 1923, p. 8.
Hammond, John. John Hammond on Record. p. 120.
Albertson, Bessie, pp. 224–225.
"Blues Legend Bessie Smith Dead 50 Years". Schenectady Gazette. 26 September 1987. Retrieved 16 November 2010.
Albertson, Chris (1972). Bessie: Empress of the Blues. London: Sphere Books. pp. 192–195. ISBN 0-300-09902-9.
Albertson (1972), p. 195.
Love, Spencie (1997). One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-8078-4682-7.
Albertson, Chris (1972). Bessie: Empress of the Blues. London: Sphere Books. p. 196. ISBN 0-300-09902-9.
Albertson, Chris (1975). Bessie: Empress of the Blues. London: Sphere Books. ISBN 0-349-10054-3)
Albertson, Bessie, pp. 2–5, 277.
Albertson, Bessie, p. 277.
"Historical Marker Placed on Mississippi Blues Trail". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Associated Press. January 25, 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-09.
Whitburn, Joel (1986). Pop Memories: 1890-1954. Record Research. ISBN 0-89820-083-0.
"Joel Whitburn Criticism: Chart Fabrication, Misrepresentation of Sources, Cherry Picking". Songbook. Retrieved 15 July 2015.
"GRAMMY Hall Of Fame". GRAMMY.org. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
[1] Archived February 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
[2] Archived February 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
500 Songs That Shaped Rock at the Wayback Machine (archived July 5, 2008)
"100 Best Jazz Recordings". Telegraph. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
"Bessie's Back in Town: The Bessie Smith Story" on YouTube
"‘Bessie’ Starring Queen Latifah to Premiere this Spring on HBO – Ratings". TVbytheNumbers.Zap2it.com. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
LEO SMITH
March 26-April 1
AHMAD JAMAL
April 2-8
DIONNE WARWICK
April 9-15
LEE MORGAN
April 16-22
BILL DIXON
April 23-29
SAM COOKE
April 30-May 6
MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS
May 7-13
BILLY HARPER
May 14-20
SISTER ROSETTA THARPE
May 21-27
QUINCY JONES
May 28-June 3
BESSIE SMITH
June 4-10
ROBERT JOHNSON
June 11-17
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/bessie-smith-mn0000054707/biography
Bessie Smith
(1894-1937)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
The first major blues and jazz singer on record and one of the most powerful of all time, Bessie Smith
rightly earned the title of "The Empress of the Blues." Even on her
first records in 1923, her passionate voice overcame the primitive
recording quality of the day and still communicates easily to today's
listeners (which is not true of any other singer from that early
period). At a time when the blues were in and most vocalists
(particularly vaudevillians) were being dubbed "blues singers," Bessie Smith simply had no competition.
Back in 1912, Bessie Smith sang in the same show as Ma Rainey, who took her under her wing and coached her. Although Rainey would achieve a measure of fame throughout her career, she was soon surpassed by her protégée. In 1920, Smith
had her own show in Atlantic City and, in 1923, she moved to New York.
She was soon signed by Columbia and her first recording (Alberta Hunter's "Downhearted Blues") made her famous. Bessie Smith worked and recorded steadily throughout the decade, using many top musicians as sidemen on sessions including Louis Armstrong, Joe Smith (her favorite cornetist), James P. Johnson, and Charlie Green.
Her summer tent show Harlem Frolics was a big success during 1925-1927,
and Mississippi Days in 1928 kept the momentum going.
However, by 1929 the blues were out of fashion and Bessie Smith's
career was declining despite being at the peak of her powers (and still
only 35). She appeared in St. Louis Blues that year (a low-budget movie
short that contains the only footage of her), but her hit recording of
"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" predicted her leaner
Depression years. Although she was dropped by Columbia in 1931 and made
her final recordings on a four-song session in 1933, Bessie Smith kept on working. She played the Apollo in 1935 and substituted for Billie Holiday
in the show Stars Over Broadway. The chances are very good that she
would have made a comeback, starting with a Carnegie Hall appearance at John Hammond's
upcoming From Spirituals to Swing concert, but she was killed in a car
crash in Mississippi. Columbia has reissued all of her recordings, first
in five two-LP sets and more recently on five two-CD box sets that also
contain her five alternate takes, the soundtrack of St. Louis Blues,
and an interview with her niece Ruby Smith. "The Empress of the Blues," based on her recordings, will never have to abdicate her throne.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/bessiesmith
Bessie Smith
Biography
“Empress of the Blues”
She embodied the meaning of the blues, living the life she sang about. Bessie Smith set the standard for blues singers on how it should be done.
Bessie Smith, born on Apr. 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was one of ten children. Her parents died by her eighth birthday, and she was raised by her older sister Viola. She was taught to sing and dance by her older brother Clarence, who later arranged an audition for Smith with the traveling Moses Stokes Show where she was hired as a dancer in 1912. She became friends with Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, a blues singer, who became her mentor. Bessie was quick to learn the profession, and by 1915 struck out own her own, singing in a vaudeville circuit and started establishing a reputation in the south and on the east coast.
By 1920 she had become quite the star, and continued to work the crowds, blending a touch of comedy, sense of drama, with a down home sense of delivery from her powerful voice. Her popularity led to the inevitable recording contract, and on February 16, 1923, she recorded “Gulf Coast Blues” and “Down Hearted Blues,” for Columbia accompanied by Clarence Williams on piano. Written and recorded by Memphis singer Alberta Hunter a year before, Bessie’s version of “Down Hearted Blues” sold more than 750,000 copies in six months, and made her a star.
She continued to record almost exclusively for Columbia, was the labels biggest star, recording over 150 songs between 1923 and1931, with constantly high sales figures. Bessie Smith’s live performances were equally successful; she toured incessantly, commanded fees of $2,000 a week and played sold out theaters across America, to both white and black audiences alike. She recorded with the best jazz sidemen, including pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson, clarinetists Benny Goodman and Buster Bailey, guitarist Eddie Lang, saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman, and the great Louis Armstrong. “St. Louis Blues” with Armstrong is a highlight in the recordings of the period, and considered one of the best renditions of the song. In May 1925, she made the first electronically recorded record, “Cake Walking Babies,” by singing into the newly invented microphone. Bessie’s songs have gone on to become blues standards and include “Backwater Blues”, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”, Empty Bed Blues”, “Careless Love”, and the all time classic “Gimme a Pigfoot”. She had a starring role in the movie St. Louis Blues which came out in 1929. Her recordings are available as compilations under a variety of labels.
The Depression years of the 1930’s saw a decline in the record sales due to hard times, radio, and the new motion picture industry. Columbia dropped Bessie from the label in 1931. She returned to the recording studio briefly in 1933 under the production of John Hammond at Okeh. This session was released as “Bessie Smith accompanied by Buck and his Band”. Though no longer putting out records she was still very popular in the South, and continued to draw large crowds, though the money was not like it was in the past. Since the blues style of music was dying out, she was starting to reinvent herself in the mid ‘30’s as a swing singer and was on a comeback.
Bessie Smith died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident on Sept. 26, 1937, she was just 43 years old.
In her short tenure as the “Empress of the Blues”, she dominated the market, and defined the role of the blues singer. Her vocal talent, commitment to the music, innate sense of swing, blended with a raw feeling of what is the blues, is her enduring legend.
https://rockhall.com/inductees/bessie-smith/bio/
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME
Bessie Smith
Biography
Bessie Smith earned the title of “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre. Her singing displayed a soulfully phrased, boldly delivered and nearly definitive grasp of the blues. In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African-American entertainer before her.
Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1894. Like many of her generation, she dreamed of escaping a life of poverty by way of show business. As a teenager she joined a traveling minstrel show, the Moss Stokes Company. Her brother Clarence was a comedian with the troupe, and Smith befriended another member, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (a.k.a. the “Mother of the Blues"), who served as something of a blues mentor. After a decade’s seasoning on the stage, Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923. Her first recording - “Down Hearted Blues” b/w “Gulf Coast Blues” - sold an estimated 800,000 copies, firmly establishing her as a major figure in the black record market. Smith sang raw, uncut country blues inspired by life in the South, in which everyday experiences were related in plainspoken language - not unlike the rap music that would emerge more than half a century later. She was ahead of her time in another sense as well. In the words of biographer Chris Albertson, “Bessie had a wonderful way of turning adversity into triumph, and many of her songs are the tales of liberated women.”
Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”
In 1989, Smith was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1994, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative Bessie Smith postage stamp. Smith's song "Downhearted Blues" has also received numerous awards. In 2001, it was named one of the Songs of the Century by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002, it was placed on the National Recording Preservation Board by the Library of Congress, and in 2006 it was placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
http://www.nndb.com/people/217/000022151/
Bessie Smith
Born: 15-Apr-1894
Birthplace: Chattanooga, TN
Died: 26-Sep-1937
Location of death: Clarksdale, MS [1]
Cause of death: Accident - Automobile
Remains: Buried, Mount Lawn Cemetery, Sharon Hill, PA
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Bisexual
Occupation: Singer
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Empress of the Blues
A major influence on the development of the blues in the early twentieth century, Bessie Smith was given a challenging start to her life, raised in poverty in the then still-segregated South. She was one of seven children born to laborer and Baptist minister William Smith and his wife Laura, but had lost both parents by the age of nine and was subsequently raised by her oldest sister Viola (who was herself only a teenager and already looking after a child of her own). While still very young, Bessie, accompanied by her brother Andrew on guitar, began dancing and singing on the streets in order to supplement her sister's income as a laundry worker; this activity did not have the approval of Viola, but was encouraged by her oldest brother Clarence, who was already making his own living as a traveling entertainer. Eventually Clarence arranged an audition for his sister with the Moses Stokes Company (the group with whom he was working at the time), after which Bessie was added to the cast as a dancer.
Over the next couple years the young performer's abilities propelled her from dancer to chorus to featured soloist in quick succession, and by 1914 her popularity rivaled that of the company's featured performer Ma Rainey. That same year she formed her own act with dancer/vocalist Wayne "Buzzin" Burton in association with Park's Big Revue at the Dixie theater in Atlanta -- a city that would serve as her base of operations into the 1920s. In 1915 she joined Rainey as a member of Fat Chappelle's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, followed by stints in Pete Werley's Florida Cotton Blossoms Minstrels Show and the Silas Green Minstrel Show in 1916. By the final years of the decade Smith had established her own Atlanta-based showcase called the Liberty Belles Revue, which featured her not only her talents as a singer and dancer but also as a male impersonator.
As a result of her touring, Smith's popularity steadily spread beyond her home territory and into the North -- enough so that in 1921 she was compelled to relocate her home base to Philadelphia, where she took up a residency at Horan's Madhouse Club for the next three years. Attempts to secure contracts with the Okeh and Black Swan labels during this time were unsuccessful, but by 1923 the mainstream interest in the blues had grown enough by this time that she was able to arrange a deal with Columbia, her first release Gulf Coast Blues b/w Down Hearted Blues appearing shortly afterwards. Both sides of the single were an enormous success, prompting Columbia to extend her one-year contract to eight (during which Smith would receive almost no return for her work). Three more hit songs followed before the end of the year -- Aggravatin' Papa, Beale Street Mama and Baby Won't You Please Come Home -- establishing the singer as one of the top blues acts in the country.
Throughout the remainder of the 1920s Smith maintained an active schedule of touring and recording, collaborating with artists such as Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong. Her popularity continued to grow as the decade progressed -- as did her reputation as a temperamental and free-spirited individual. This fearless lack of restraint nearly cost the singer her life in 1925, when a man the singer had punched at an after-show party retaliated by knifing her on her way home (she still managed to chase after him despite the serious injury). Many of her releases during this time were credited to either Bessie Smith and Her Blue Boys (whose line-up centered around pianist Henderson) or Bessie with Her Band. In addition to her straightforward vocal work, she continued to be active in vaudeville and musical comedy, performing in Mississipi Days in 1927 and the Jazz Regiment and Late Hour Dancers in 1929. Her first (and only) screen appearance also took place in 1929 with a starring role in St. Louis Blues, a short film that was given a strong critical reception.
In spite of the success of St. Louis Blues, 1929 proved to be a difficult year for Smith -- for both personal and professional reasons. Her tumultuous relationship with husband Jack Gee had finally come to an end, and in an act of vindictiveness he removed from her the two closest people in Smith's life: her adopted son and her niece Ruby Walker. Not long afterward the least successful show of her career -- a Broadway musical called Pansy -- opened to extremely poor reviews, closing only three days later. The popularity of feature-length "talkies" had been steadily eroding interest in live vaudeville shows since their arrival in 1927, while the market crash in the fall of '29 had a detrimental impact on audience attendance to shows of any kind. Smith continued to pursue her music career throughout the depression, however, maintaining a small "bootlegging" (illegal liquor) operation on the side in order to keep herself financially stable. Her last two recordings for the ungrateful twits at Columbia, Safety Mama b/w Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl, were released in November of 1931.
After struggling through most of the next two years with no recording opportunities and severely diminished audiences, Smith's fortunes began to improve once again after recording some songs for the OKeh label towards the end of 1933 (one of these tracks, Give Me a Pigfoot, featuring Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden as two of her backing musicians). Demand for her live performances steadily increased as the 1930s progressed, and by 1936 was such that a one-night booking to replace Billie Holiday at Connie's Inn in New York was extended into a residency of two months. Invitations to perform at prestigious venues such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo in New York and Art's Café and the Wander Inn in Philadelphia followed.
In the fall of 1937 Smith accepted the role of featured performer with the Broadway Rastus show for a tour of the South. In the early hours of September 26th, while en route to Mississippi after a performance in Memphis, the singer and her current partner Richard Morgan crashed into a large truck parked on the shoulder of an unlit road; Morgan was largely unaffected by the accident, but Smith sustained a serious injury to one of her arms. An ambulance arrived to transport her to a black hospital in nearby Clarksdale, where, according to the testimony of the attending doctor, she died within 10 hours of having been admitted despite extensive medical attention. Numerous conflicting stories were subsequently circulated, one claiming that she had died before reaching the hospital because the first ambulance on the scene had chosen instead to take a white woman who had crashed into the back of Morgan's car after the initial accident. Another story claimed that Smith was refused admittance to the first hospital to which she was brought (being a whites-only facility) and died as a result of the delay in treatment; it was this latter version that was used by playwright Edward Albee in his 1959 work The Death of Bessie Smith.
[1] GT Thomas Hospital, Clarksdale, MS. Father: WIlliam Smith (laborer and minister)
Mother: Laura
Brother: Clarence (musician)
Sister: Viola
Brother: Andrew
Sister: Tinnie
Sister: Lulu
Husband: Earl Love (m. 1920, died 192?)
Boyfriend: Sidney Bechet
Husband: Jack Gee (m. 1923, div. 1929)
Son: Jack Gee, Jr. (adopted)
Boyfriend: Richard Morgan (bootlegger) Bessie Smith
Blues Hall of Fame 1980
http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/african-american/fascinating-women-bessie-smith-and-the-blues/
Many music historians–and historians in general–consider the musical
genres that emerged from African-American communities at the turn of the
century to be the first authentically “American” style of music.
Ragtime, blues, jazz, and the like are also considered the soundtrack of
early twentieth century American life, and the combination of the
popular press, new technologies like phonographs and the cinema, and the
hunger for celebrities, created a perfect storm for the rise of music
stars. And female music stars in particular.
The earliest blues music appeared at the turn of the century, in New Orleans, where there was a “cross-pollination of many kinds of music…Marches, French quadrilles, Spanish rhythms, black dance music and of course ragtime.” 1 The work songs, spirituals, and gospel music sung by African-Americans around this period shared similar elements, namely that of “call and response,” and in general, encompassed a wide range of emotions borne from life’s tough, heartbreaking experiences. As black music spread upwards from the Mississippi Delta, with the migration of African-Americans to the Midwest and North, these various elements began to morph away from ragtime and into the two genres soon to be known as the blues and jazz.
In 1914, W. C. Handy recorded the first song that officially set the standard for the blues and its twelve bar, AAB form:
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
B: Cause my baby, he’s gone left this town
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
B: Cause my baby, he’s gone left this town
Feelin’ tomorrow like I feel today… 2
It’s no coincidence that the blues emerged during the nadir of race relations in the United States, and many white audiences reacted to blues (and jazz) with a mix of fascinated revulsion, both because of its roots in the black community and its “low” style in comparison to “high” style music like opera. Mainstream society was also still reeling from other forms of black music, like ragtime and the tango, with their accompanying dances!
According to Angela Y. Davis, in Blues Legacy and Black Feminism, “The historical context within which the blues developed a tradition of openly addressing both female and male sexuality reveals an ideological framework that was specifically African-American. Emerging during the decades following the abolition of slavery, the blues gave musical expression to the new social and sexual realities encountered by African Americans as free women and men. The former slaves’ economic status had not undergone a radical transformation–they were no less impoverished than they had been during slavery. It was the status of their personal relationships that was revolutionalized. For the first time in the history of the African presence in North America, masses of black women and men were in a position to make autonomous decisions regarding the sexual partnerships into which they entered. Sexuality thus was one of the most tangible domains in which emancipation was acted upon and through which its meanings were expressed. Sovereignty in sexual matters marked an important divide between life during slavery and life after emancipation.”
Folkorists attempted to understand and categorize the blues, as seen in this interview with W.C. Handy in 1916:
Smith’s career rose once she joined the Theater Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA), which was a vaudeville circuit that specialized in booking black talent in the United States’s black theaters. And once she signed with Columbia Records, Smith took control of her own career–a revolutionary decision as an African-American and as a woman. The music industry was in its infancy, and mostly released respectable music and recordings of stage hits. Black musicians were rare, save for extraordinary acts like James Reese Europe and his band (Europe was the musical director for Vernon and Irene Castle before WWI), but this changed with the release of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920.
Smith, no relation to Bessie, ushered in a new dawn for black musicians and the music industry (though, their music was categorized as “race records”). Bessie Smith entered the recording studio, armed with a one year contract and an advance of $1500, and soon released her first hit, “Downhearted Blues.”
The 1920s was Bessie Smith’s era, and she set the bar not only for female blues performers, but for African-Americans in the music industry. By the time of her death in 1937, Smith had released nearly twenty hit records, and directly influenced the career of her contemporaries (Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters) and a new generation of singers, like Billie Holiday.
Bessie airs on HBO May 16, 2015 at 8 PM.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/bessiesmith
Bessie Smith
Biography
“Empress of the Blues”
She embodied the meaning of the blues, living the life she sang about. Bessie Smith set the standard for blues singers on how it should be done.
Bessie Smith, born on Apr. 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was one of ten children. Her parents died by her eighth birthday, and she was raised by her older sister Viola. She was taught to sing and dance by her older brother Clarence, who later arranged an audition for Smith with the traveling Moses Stokes Show where she was hired as a dancer in 1912. She became friends with Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, a blues singer, who became her mentor. Bessie was quick to learn the profession, and by 1915 struck out own her own, singing in a vaudeville circuit and started establishing a reputation in the south and on the east coast.
By 1920 she had become quite the star, and continued to work the crowds, blending a touch of comedy, sense of drama, with a down home sense of delivery from her powerful voice. Her popularity led to the inevitable recording contract, and on February 16, 1923, she recorded “Gulf Coast Blues” and “Down Hearted Blues,” for Columbia accompanied by Clarence Williams on piano. Written and recorded by Memphis singer Alberta Hunter a year before, Bessie’s version of “Down Hearted Blues” sold more than 750,000 copies in six months, and made her a star.
She continued to record almost exclusively for Columbia, was the labels biggest star, recording over 150 songs between 1923 and1931, with constantly high sales figures. Bessie Smith’s live performances were equally successful; she toured incessantly, commanded fees of $2,000 a week and played sold out theaters across America, to both white and black audiences alike. She recorded with the best jazz sidemen, including pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson, clarinetists Benny Goodman and Buster Bailey, guitarist Eddie Lang, saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman, and the great Louis Armstrong. “St. Louis Blues” with Armstrong is a highlight in the recordings of the period, and considered one of the best renditions of the song. In May 1925, she made the first electronically recorded record, “Cake Walking Babies,” by singing into the newly invented microphone. Bessie’s songs have gone on to become blues standards and include “Backwater Blues”, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”, Empty Bed Blues”, “Careless Love”, and the all time classic “Gimme a Pigfoot”. She had a starring role in the movie St. Louis Blues which came out in 1929. Her recordings are available as compilations under a variety of labels.
The Depression years of the 1930’s saw a decline in the record sales due to hard times, radio, and the new motion picture industry. Columbia dropped Bessie from the label in 1931. She returned to the recording studio briefly in 1933 under the production of John Hammond at Okeh. This session was released as “Bessie Smith accompanied by Buck and his Band”. Though no longer putting out records she was still very popular in the South, and continued to draw large crowds, though the money was not like it was in the past. Since the blues style of music was dying out, she was starting to reinvent herself in the mid ‘30’s as a swing singer and was on a comeback.
Bessie Smith died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident on Sept. 26, 1937, she was just 43 years old.
In her short tenure as the “Empress of the Blues”, she dominated the market, and defined the role of the blues singer. Her vocal talent, commitment to the music, innate sense of swing, blended with a raw feeling of what is the blues, is her enduring legend.
https://rockhall.com/inductees/bessie-smith/bio/
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME
Bessie Smith
Biography
Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1894. Like many of her generation, she dreamed of escaping a life of poverty by way of show business. As a teenager she joined a traveling minstrel show, the Moss Stokes Company. Her brother Clarence was a comedian with the troupe, and Smith befriended another member, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (a.k.a. the “Mother of the Blues"), who served as something of a blues mentor. After a decade’s seasoning on the stage, Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923. Her first recording - “Down Hearted Blues” b/w “Gulf Coast Blues” - sold an estimated 800,000 copies, firmly establishing her as a major figure in the black record market. Smith sang raw, uncut country blues inspired by life in the South, in which everyday experiences were related in plainspoken language - not unlike the rap music that would emerge more than half a century later. She was ahead of her time in another sense as well. In the words of biographer Chris Albertson, “Bessie had a wonderful way of turning adversity into triumph, and many of her songs are the tales of liberated women.”
Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”
In 1989, Smith was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1994, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative Bessie Smith postage stamp. Smith's song "Downhearted Blues" has also received numerous awards. In 2001, it was named one of the Songs of the Century by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002, it was placed on the National Recording Preservation Board by the Library of Congress, and in 2006 it was placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
http://www.nndb.com/people/217/000022151/
Bessie Smith
Born: 15-Apr-1894Birthplace: Chattanooga, TN
Died: 26-Sep-1937
Location of death: Clarksdale, MS [1]
Cause of death: Accident - Automobile
Remains: Buried, Mount Lawn Cemetery, Sharon Hill, PA
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Bisexual
Occupation: Singer
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Empress of the Blues
A major influence on the development of the blues in the early twentieth century, Bessie Smith was given a challenging start to her life, raised in poverty in the then still-segregated South. She was one of seven children born to laborer and Baptist minister William Smith and his wife Laura, but had lost both parents by the age of nine and was subsequently raised by her oldest sister Viola (who was herself only a teenager and already looking after a child of her own). While still very young, Bessie, accompanied by her brother Andrew on guitar, began dancing and singing on the streets in order to supplement her sister's income as a laundry worker; this activity did not have the approval of Viola, but was encouraged by her oldest brother Clarence, who was already making his own living as a traveling entertainer. Eventually Clarence arranged an audition for his sister with the Moses Stokes Company (the group with whom he was working at the time), after which Bessie was added to the cast as a dancer.
Over the next couple years the young performer's abilities propelled her from dancer to chorus to featured soloist in quick succession, and by 1914 her popularity rivaled that of the company's featured performer Ma Rainey. That same year she formed her own act with dancer/vocalist Wayne "Buzzin" Burton in association with Park's Big Revue at the Dixie theater in Atlanta -- a city that would serve as her base of operations into the 1920s. In 1915 she joined Rainey as a member of Fat Chappelle's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, followed by stints in Pete Werley's Florida Cotton Blossoms Minstrels Show and the Silas Green Minstrel Show in 1916. By the final years of the decade Smith had established her own Atlanta-based showcase called the Liberty Belles Revue, which featured her not only her talents as a singer and dancer but also as a male impersonator.
As a result of her touring, Smith's popularity steadily spread beyond her home territory and into the North -- enough so that in 1921 she was compelled to relocate her home base to Philadelphia, where she took up a residency at Horan's Madhouse Club for the next three years. Attempts to secure contracts with the Okeh and Black Swan labels during this time were unsuccessful, but by 1923 the mainstream interest in the blues had grown enough by this time that she was able to arrange a deal with Columbia, her first release Gulf Coast Blues b/w Down Hearted Blues appearing shortly afterwards. Both sides of the single were an enormous success, prompting Columbia to extend her one-year contract to eight (during which Smith would receive almost no return for her work). Three more hit songs followed before the end of the year -- Aggravatin' Papa, Beale Street Mama and Baby Won't You Please Come Home -- establishing the singer as one of the top blues acts in the country.
Throughout the remainder of the 1920s Smith maintained an active schedule of touring and recording, collaborating with artists such as Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong. Her popularity continued to grow as the decade progressed -- as did her reputation as a temperamental and free-spirited individual. This fearless lack of restraint nearly cost the singer her life in 1925, when a man the singer had punched at an after-show party retaliated by knifing her on her way home (she still managed to chase after him despite the serious injury). Many of her releases during this time were credited to either Bessie Smith and Her Blue Boys (whose line-up centered around pianist Henderson) or Bessie with Her Band. In addition to her straightforward vocal work, she continued to be active in vaudeville and musical comedy, performing in Mississipi Days in 1927 and the Jazz Regiment and Late Hour Dancers in 1929. Her first (and only) screen appearance also took place in 1929 with a starring role in St. Louis Blues, a short film that was given a strong critical reception.
In spite of the success of St. Louis Blues, 1929 proved to be a difficult year for Smith -- for both personal and professional reasons. Her tumultuous relationship with husband Jack Gee had finally come to an end, and in an act of vindictiveness he removed from her the two closest people in Smith's life: her adopted son and her niece Ruby Walker. Not long afterward the least successful show of her career -- a Broadway musical called Pansy -- opened to extremely poor reviews, closing only three days later. The popularity of feature-length "talkies" had been steadily eroding interest in live vaudeville shows since their arrival in 1927, while the market crash in the fall of '29 had a detrimental impact on audience attendance to shows of any kind. Smith continued to pursue her music career throughout the depression, however, maintaining a small "bootlegging" (illegal liquor) operation on the side in order to keep herself financially stable. Her last two recordings for the ungrateful twits at Columbia, Safety Mama b/w Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl, were released in November of 1931.
After struggling through most of the next two years with no recording opportunities and severely diminished audiences, Smith's fortunes began to improve once again after recording some songs for the OKeh label towards the end of 1933 (one of these tracks, Give Me a Pigfoot, featuring Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden as two of her backing musicians). Demand for her live performances steadily increased as the 1930s progressed, and by 1936 was such that a one-night booking to replace Billie Holiday at Connie's Inn in New York was extended into a residency of two months. Invitations to perform at prestigious venues such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo in New York and Art's Café and the Wander Inn in Philadelphia followed.
In the fall of 1937 Smith accepted the role of featured performer with the Broadway Rastus show for a tour of the South. In the early hours of September 26th, while en route to Mississippi after a performance in Memphis, the singer and her current partner Richard Morgan crashed into a large truck parked on the shoulder of an unlit road; Morgan was largely unaffected by the accident, but Smith sustained a serious injury to one of her arms. An ambulance arrived to transport her to a black hospital in nearby Clarksdale, where, according to the testimony of the attending doctor, she died within 10 hours of having been admitted despite extensive medical attention. Numerous conflicting stories were subsequently circulated, one claiming that she had died before reaching the hospital because the first ambulance on the scene had chosen instead to take a white woman who had crashed into the back of Morgan's car after the initial accident. Another story claimed that Smith was refused admittance to the first hospital to which she was brought (being a whites-only facility) and died as a result of the delay in treatment; it was this latter version that was used by playwright Edward Albee in his 1959 work The Death of Bessie Smith.
[1] GT Thomas Hospital, Clarksdale, MS. Father: WIlliam Smith (laborer and minister)
Mother: Laura
Brother: Clarence (musician)
Sister: Viola
Brother: Andrew
Sister: Tinnie
Sister: Lulu
Husband: Earl Love (m. 1920, died 192?)
Boyfriend: Sidney Bechet
Husband: Jack Gee (m. 1923, div. 1929)
Son: Jack Gee, Jr. (adopted)
Boyfriend: Richard Morgan (bootlegger) Bessie Smith
Blues Hall of Fame 1980
Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Empty Bed Bluess (1983)
Grammy Hall of Fame Award for St. Louis Blues (with Louis Armstrong) (1993)
Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Downhearted Blues (2006)
http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/african-american/fascinating-women-bessie-smith-and-the-blues/
Fascinating Women: Bessie Smith and the Blues
Bessie Smith
The earliest blues music appeared at the turn of the century, in New Orleans, where there was a “cross-pollination of many kinds of music…Marches, French quadrilles, Spanish rhythms, black dance music and of course ragtime.” 1 The work songs, spirituals, and gospel music sung by African-Americans around this period shared similar elements, namely that of “call and response,” and in general, encompassed a wide range of emotions borne from life’s tough, heartbreaking experiences. As black music spread upwards from the Mississippi Delta, with the migration of African-Americans to the Midwest and North, these various elements began to morph away from ragtime and into the two genres soon to be known as the blues and jazz.
In 1914, W. C. Handy recorded the first song that officially set the standard for the blues and its twelve bar, AAB form:
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
B: Cause my baby, he’s gone left this town
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
B: Cause my baby, he’s gone left this town
Feelin’ tomorrow like I feel today… 2
It’s no coincidence that the blues emerged during the nadir of race relations in the United States, and many white audiences reacted to blues (and jazz) with a mix of fascinated revulsion, both because of its roots in the black community and its “low” style in comparison to “high” style music like opera. Mainstream society was also still reeling from other forms of black music, like ragtime and the tango, with their accompanying dances!
According to Angela Y. Davis, in Blues Legacy and Black Feminism, “The historical context within which the blues developed a tradition of openly addressing both female and male sexuality reveals an ideological framework that was specifically African-American. Emerging during the decades following the abolition of slavery, the blues gave musical expression to the new social and sexual realities encountered by African Americans as free women and men. The former slaves’ economic status had not undergone a radical transformation–they were no less impoverished than they had been during slavery. It was the status of their personal relationships that was revolutionalized. For the first time in the history of the African presence in North America, masses of black women and men were in a position to make autonomous decisions regarding the sexual partnerships into which they entered. Sexuality thus was one of the most tangible domains in which emancipation was acted upon and through which its meanings were expressed. Sovereignty in sexual matters marked an important divide between life during slavery and life after emancipation.”
Folkorists attempted to understand and categorize the blues, as seen in this interview with W.C. Handy in 1916:
“Have blues any relation to Negro folksong?” Handy replied instantly, “Yes, they are folk-music.”
“Do you mean in the sense that a song is taken up by many singers who change and adapt it and add to it in accordance with their own mood?” I asked. “That constitutes communal singing in part, at least.”
“I mean that and more,” he responded. “That is true, ol course, of the blues, as I’ll illustrate a little later. But blues are folk-songs in more ways than that. They are essentially racial— the ones that are genuine (though since they became the fashion many blues have been written that are not Negro in character), and they have a basis in older folk-song.”
“A general or a specific basis?” I wished to know.
“Specific,” he answered. “Each one of my blues is based on some old Negro song of the South, some folk-song that I heard from my mammy when I was a child. Something that sticks in my mind, that I hum to myself when I’m not thinking about it. Some old song that is a part of the memories of my childhood and of my race. I can tell you the exact song I used as a basis for any one of my blues. Yes, the blues that are genuine are really folk-songs.”
I asked Handy if the blues were a new musical invention, and he said, “No. They are essentially of our race and our people have been singing like that for many years. But they have been publicly developed and exploited in the last few years. I was the first to publish any of them or to develop this special type by name.” He brought out his Memphis Blues, his first “blues” song, in 1910, he said.
The fact that the blues were a form of folk-singing before Handy published his, is corroborated by various persons who have discussed the matter with me, and in Texas the Negroes have been fond of them for a long time. Early Busby, now a musician in New York, says that the shifts of Negroes working at his father’s brickyard in East Texas years ago, used to sing constantly at their tasks and were particularly fond of the blues.
Handy commented on several points in connection with the blues—for instance, the fact that they are, he says, all in one tone, but with different movements according to the time in which they are written. The theme of this modern folk-music is, according to Handy, the Negro’s emotional feeling apart from the religious. As is well recognized, the Negro normally is a person of strong religious impulse, and the spirituals are famous as expressing his religious moods,—but they do not reveal all his nature. The Negro has longings, regrets, despondencies and hopes that affect him strongly, but are not connected with religion. The blues, therefore, may be said to voice his secular interests and emotions as sincerely as the spirituals do the religious. Handy said that the blues express the Negro’s two-fold nature, the grave and the gay, reveal his ability to appear the opposite of what he is.
“Most white people think that the Negro is always cheerful and lively,” he explained. “But he isn’t, though he can be that way sometimes when he is most troubled in mind. The Negro knows the blues as a state of mind, and that’s why this music has that name.” 3Around this time, a young Bessie Smith was forming her talents under the wing of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, an early blues singer who also owned her own theatre troupe. Smith was born one of seven children in Chattanooga, TN in 1894, and was orphaned by age eight. At age nine, “Bessie sang on street corners for nickles…she sang everything, including Baptist hymns.” 4 Her brother Clarence had since run away to the stage and arranged an audition for his sister with Moses Stokes’s travelling show–which is where she met Ma Rainey. Despite Smith’s disadvantages–her voluptuous body, her heavier features, and her darker skin, in a time where black female artists were expected to be “tall, tan, and terrific”–she had an undeniable talent.
Smith’s career rose once she joined the Theater Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA), which was a vaudeville circuit that specialized in booking black talent in the United States’s black theaters. And once she signed with Columbia Records, Smith took control of her own career–a revolutionary decision as an African-American and as a woman. The music industry was in its infancy, and mostly released respectable music and recordings of stage hits. Black musicians were rare, save for extraordinary acts like James Reese Europe and his band (Europe was the musical director for Vernon and Irene Castle before WWI), but this changed with the release of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920.
Smith, no relation to Bessie, ushered in a new dawn for black musicians and the music industry (though, their music was categorized as “race records”). Bessie Smith entered the recording studio, armed with a one year contract and an advance of $1500, and soon released her first hit, “Downhearted Blues.”
The 1920s was Bessie Smith’s era, and she set the bar not only for female blues performers, but for African-Americans in the music industry. By the time of her death in 1937, Smith had released nearly twenty hit records, and directly influenced the career of her contemporaries (Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters) and a new generation of singers, like Billie Holiday.
Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith in HBO’s “Bessie”
- Giles Oakley. The Devil’s Music: A History of the Blues (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1976), 33 ↩
- http://www.lyricsmania.com/st_louis_blues_wc_handy,_1914_lyrics_sue_keller.html ↩
- Dorothy Scarborough, “The ‘Blues’ as Folk-Songs,” Publications of the Texas Folklore Society no 2 (1916), 52-66. ↩
- Elaine Feinstein. Bessie Smith (Great Britain: Viking, 1985), 20. ↩
http://www.biography.com/people/bessie-smith-9486520
Bessie Smith Biography
Singer (1894–1937)
Jazz and blues vocalist Bessie Smith's powerful, soulful voice won her countless fans and earned her the title "Empress of the Blues.”
Synopsis
Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 15, 1894. She began to sing at a young age and in 1923 signed a contract with Columbia Records. Soon she was among the highest-paid black performers of her time with hits like "Downhearted Blues." By the end of the 1920s, however, her popularity had lessened, though she continued to perform and made new recordings at the start of the Swing Era. Her comeback and life were cut short from an automobile accident outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi, with Smith dying from her injuries on September 26, 1937.
Early Life
Bessie Smith was born on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was one of seven children. Her father, a Baptist minister, died soon after her birth, leaving her mother to raise her and her siblings. Around 1906, her mother and two of her brothers died and Smith and her remaining siblings were raised by their aunt. It was around this time that Smith began to perform as a street singer, accompanied on the guitar by one of her younger brothers. In 1912, Smith began performing as a dancer in the Moses Stokes minstrel show, and soon thereafter in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, of which blues vocalist Ma Rainey was a member. Rainey took Smith under her wing, and over the next decade Smith continued to perform at various theaters and on the vaudeville circuit.
The Empress of the Blues
By the early 1920s, Smith had settled down and was living in Philadelphia, and in 1923 she met and married a man named Jack Gee. That same year, she was discovered by a representative from Columbia Records, with whom she signed a contract and made her first song recordings. Among them was a track titled "Downhearted Blues," which was wildly popular and sold an estimated 800,000 copies, propelling Smith into the blues spotlight. With her rich, powerful voice, Smith soon became a successful recording artist and toured extensively. Going forward with an idea presented by her brother and business manager Clarence, Smith eventually bought a custom railroad car for her traveling troupe to travel and sleep in.
READ ARTICLE: “The Mother and The Empress: Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith” about Rainey’s influence on the life and career of Bessie Smith.
READ ARTICLE: “The Mother and The Empress: Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith” about Rainey’s influence on the life and career of Bessie Smith.
In her recording career, Bessie Smith worked with many important jazz performers, such as saxophonist Sidney Bechet and pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson. With Johnson, she recorded one of her most famous songs, "Backwater Blues." Smith also collaborated with the legendary jazz artist Louis Armstrong on several tunes, including "Cold in Hand Blues" and "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle." By the end of the 1920s, Smith was the highest-paid black performer of her day, and had earned herself the title "Empress of the Blues."
Decline and Revival
However, at the height of her success, Bessie Smith’s career began to flounder, due in part to the financial ravages of the Great Depression and a change in cultural mores. In 1929 she and Jack Gee permanently separated, and by the end of 1931 Smith had stopped working with Columbia altogether. However, ever the dedicated performer, Smith adapted her repertoire and continued to tour. In 1933, Smith was contacted by producer John Hammond to make new recordings, which hinted at the coming Swing Era.
Death and Legacy
Over the next few years, Smith continued to perform. However, on September 26, 1937, Smith was en route to a show in Memphis, Tennessee with her companion of many years, Richard Morgan, when he sideswiped a truck and lost control of their car. Smith was thrown from the vehicle and badly injured. She died of her wounds in a Clarkdale, Mississippi hospital. She was 43.
Smith’s funeral was held in Philadelphia a week later, with thousands coming to pay their respects. She was buried in Mount Lawn Cemetery in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania.
Since her death, Bessie Smith’s music continues to win over new fans, and collections of her songs have continued to sell extremely well over the years. She has been a primary influence for countless female vocalists—including Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin—and has been immortalized in numerous works. A comprehensive, acclaimed bio on her life—Bessie, by journalist Chris Albertson—was published in 1972 and expanded in 2003. An HBO film loosely based on the book is slated to air in 2015, with Queen Latifah (who also executive produced the project) portraying Smith and Mo'Nique playing Ma Rainey.
http://blog.oup.com/2015/05/bessie-smith-empress-blues/
Bessie Smith: the Empress of the Blues
by Scott Yanow
May 24, 2015
The filming and recent airing of the HBO film Bessie, which stars Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, serves as a perfect excuse to look back at the music and life of the woman who was accurately billed as the Empress Of The Blues.
When Bessie Smith made her recording debut in 1923, she was not the first blues singer to record. Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920 had been such a major hit that it began a blues craze with scores of African-American female singers being documented. While many were quickly forgotten, Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter were the biggest discoveries before Smith finally appeared on record. She was also not the first jazz singer to record, being preceded by most notably Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike) and Marion Harris. However Bessie Smith soon became widely recognized as the most important female blues and jazz singer of the 1920s, and her impact can still be felt nearly a century later.
A listen to some of Bessie Smith’s recordings from 1923 and early 1924 can be a revelation. The recording quality is primitive and much of her accompaniment, even from such pianists as Fletcher Henderson and Clarence Williams, is barely adequate. And yet Smith ignores everything else and sings with power, sincerity and passion that still communicate very well to today’s listeners. It is not just the volume of her voice or her general sassiness and strength. There is an intensity to her interpretations that lets listeners know that she will not stand for any nonsense, that she is a strong independent woman, and that she is a force to be reckoned with.
Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on 15 April 1894. Not only did she grow up poor and black in the South but she lost both of her parents before her tenth birthday. Smith sang in the streets after school, gaining important experience while raising some money for her family. In 1912 when she was 18, she joined the Moses Stock Troupe as a dancer and an occasional singer. She traveled with the company throughout the South and learned about show business and life from their main vocalist Ma Rainey who is considered the first blues singer. Smith switched her emphasis from popular songs to the blues during this period.
Bessie Smith’s singing talents were very obvious as she entered her twenties and worked with other troupes. Her charismatic performances were often hypnotic not only due to the power of her voice but in the directness and truth of the words that she sang. Although the first wave of the blues craze somehow missed her, in 1923 she had her chance. Her very first released recording, Alberta Hunter’s “Downhearted Blues,” was a major hit that eventually sold 800,000 copies. During 1923-33 Smith recorded 160 songs and those often-timeless recordings are Bessie Smith’s musical legacy.
In her recordings, Bessie Smith (as with virtually all of the singers of the era) did not sing directly about racism. Her label (Columbia) would not have released anything that could offend whites in the South. But while many of her recordings dealt with the ups and downs of romances, she also sang about the difficulties of poverty, being treated poorly by men, and even about a few topical events such as floods (“Backwater Blues”). While she did not mince words, one always felt that she would overcome her difficulties. There were also bits of humor in some of the lyrics along with an occasional more light-hearted and jazz-oriented piece. Among the songs that she turned into classics were “’Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do” (which later on was a hit for both Billie Holiday and Jimmy Witherspoon), “Careless Love,” “Backwater Blues,” “Muddy Water,” “Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair,” “Mean Old Bed Bug Blues,” “Empty Bed Blues,” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Both the recording quality and the quality of her sidemen improved by 1925. Louis Armstrong on cornet holds his own with Bessie Smith (and vice versa) on “Careless Love” and “St. Louis Blues,” the superb stride pianist James P. Johnson is perfect on a series of late 1920s recordings, and other favorite players included cornetist Joe Smith and trombonist Charlie Green. Smith also starred in the 1929 short film St. Louis Blues, her only movie appearance.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bessie Smith was able to adapt to changing musical and social conditions. She survived both the end of the blues craze and the Depression although the latter and the collapse of the record industry resulted in her only having one record date after 1931. She musically reinvented herself from a blues singer into a bluesy jazz vocalist, a move that unfortunately was not documented on records. In 1935 Bessie sang at the Apollo Theater and appeared in several shows, gearing herself for what would certainly have been a major comeback during the swing era.
It took the tragic car accident of 26 September 1937, which resulted in her death at the age of 43, to stop her — but nothing, not even the passing of 90 years, lessens the impact of the recordings of the Empress of the Blues.
Scott Yanow is a jazz reviewer, historian, and author of many books on jazz, including The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide, The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide, and Jazz: A Regional Exploration.
See more at:
http://blog.oup.com/2015/05/bessie-smith-empress-blues/#sthash.GcUU394m.dpuf
Along
with Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith, singer Bessie Smith helped pioneer the
genre of blues music and propel it into popular culture. Her early death
at the age of 43 cut short a career that influenced the direction of
American music and contributed to the success of African Americans in
the performing arts.
Smith was born into poverty most likely on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee to William Smith, a preacher, and Laura Smith. Both parents died when Bessie was young. To help support her orphaned siblings, Bessie began her career as a Chattanooga street musician, singing in a duo with her brother Andrew to earn money to support their indigent family.
In 1912 at the age of 18 she joined the traveling Moses Stokes Company, where she met and became friends with Georgia blues performer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. Smith traveled with the show as a singer and dancer and then as a performer with the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the leading vaudeville circuit for black American performers during the 1920s and 1930s. With TOBA, Smith gradually built up a regional and eventually a national following. In 1921 she was ready to record, but early auditions with recording companies like Okeh were unsuccessful.
However, the year 1923 proved significant to Smith both personally and professionally. She married night watchman John “Jack” Gee, and she made her recording debut with Columbia Records teaming with pianist Clarence Williams. Evidence suggests that both Gee and Williams siphoned money from Bessie’s earnings as her career took off.
Initially, Smith and Williams recorded two songs, “Gulf Coast Blues” and “Down Hearted Blues,” which sold more than 750,000 in its first year of release. Following her debut success, Columbia Records promoted her as “Queen of the Blues,” but the press soon upgraded her nickname to “Empress of the Blues.”
During her career, Smith also worked with musicians such as James P. Johnson, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman and Louis Armstrong. Throughout the 1920s she made more than 160 recordings with Columbia and appeared briefly on stage and screen performances. In 1929 she sang in the Broadway revue Pansy, and the same year she starred in St. Louis Blues, a short film based on W. C. Handy’s song.
In 1931 Smith’s career took a turn when Columbia Records dropped her from its label. Although she was still popular among many blues fans in the South and along the East Coast, Smith’s style was falling out of favor with the growing popularity of jazz and swing music coupled with reduced record sales during the Depression. She was attempting a comeback as a swing performer with the help of jazz producer and song writer John Hammond when she died in a fatal car crash near Clarksdale, Mississippi on September 26, 1937.
Since her death Bessie Smith has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, winning posthumous awards for her 1923 single “Downhearted Blues,” 1925 single “St. Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong, and a 1928 single “Empty Bed Blues." Smith has also been honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
Smith was born into poverty most likely on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee to William Smith, a preacher, and Laura Smith. Both parents died when Bessie was young. To help support her orphaned siblings, Bessie began her career as a Chattanooga street musician, singing in a duo with her brother Andrew to earn money to support their indigent family.
In 1912 at the age of 18 she joined the traveling Moses Stokes Company, where she met and became friends with Georgia blues performer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. Smith traveled with the show as a singer and dancer and then as a performer with the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the leading vaudeville circuit for black American performers during the 1920s and 1930s. With TOBA, Smith gradually built up a regional and eventually a national following. In 1921 she was ready to record, but early auditions with recording companies like Okeh were unsuccessful.
However, the year 1923 proved significant to Smith both personally and professionally. She married night watchman John “Jack” Gee, and she made her recording debut with Columbia Records teaming with pianist Clarence Williams. Evidence suggests that both Gee and Williams siphoned money from Bessie’s earnings as her career took off.
Initially, Smith and Williams recorded two songs, “Gulf Coast Blues” and “Down Hearted Blues,” which sold more than 750,000 in its first year of release. Following her debut success, Columbia Records promoted her as “Queen of the Blues,” but the press soon upgraded her nickname to “Empress of the Blues.”
During her career, Smith also worked with musicians such as James P. Johnson, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman and Louis Armstrong. Throughout the 1920s she made more than 160 recordings with Columbia and appeared briefly on stage and screen performances. In 1929 she sang in the Broadway revue Pansy, and the same year she starred in St. Louis Blues, a short film based on W. C. Handy’s song.
In 1931 Smith’s career took a turn when Columbia Records dropped her from its label. Although she was still popular among many blues fans in the South and along the East Coast, Smith’s style was falling out of favor with the growing popularity of jazz and swing music coupled with reduced record sales during the Depression. She was attempting a comeback as a swing performer with the help of jazz producer and song writer John Hammond when she died in a fatal car crash near Clarksdale, Mississippi on September 26, 1937.
Since her death Bessie Smith has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, winning posthumous awards for her 1923 single “Downhearted Blues,” 1925 single “St. Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong, and a 1928 single “Empty Bed Blues." Smith has also been honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
Sources:
Chris Albertson, Bessie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (New York: Random House, 1998); Nanette de Jong, “Smith, Bessie (15 Apr. 1894-26 Sept. 1937),” American National Biography Online (New York: Oxford University Press, February 2000).
- See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bessie-smith-1894-1937#sthash.3FbZk7U2.dpufChris Albertson, Bessie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (New York: Random House, 1998); Nanette de Jong, “Smith, Bessie (15 Apr. 1894-26 Sept. 1937),” American National Biography Online (New York: Oxford University Press, February 2000).
THE MUSIC OF BESSIE SMITH: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH BESSIE SMITH:
Bessie Smith-- "Careless Love Blues":
Bessie Smith-"Back Water Blues":
Bessie Smith-- "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out"-- 1929):
Bessie Smith - "A Good Man is Hard to Find":
"Empty Bed Blues"-- Bessie Smith:
Bessie Smith -- "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" 1923:
Bessie Smith - "Downhearted Blues":
Bessie Smith - "Yellowdog Blues":
Bessie Smith - "Do Your Duty":
Bessie Smith - "I Need a Little Sugar In My Bowl" (Audio):
Bessie: The Music of Bessie Smith (HBO Films):
HBO Films presents Bessie, focusing on legendary blues singer Bessie Smith, Saturday, May 16, 2016 at 8PM.
Bessie Smith - "My Kitchen Man":
Released in 1929 on Columbia 14435D
'ST. LOUIS BLUES'
Blues Legend Bessie Smith's only film appearance. Uncut 1929:
Bessie Smith - "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"-- (Audio):
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/bessie_smith/
Bessie Smith
Top Lyrics
- 1
- 22 meanings
- 3
- 4
- 5
- You've Got To Give Me Some
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Smith
Bessie Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bessie Smith 
Smith in 1936 (photograph by Carl Van Vechten)Background information Birth name Bessie Smith Also known as The Empress of the Blues Born April 15, 1894 Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S. Died September 26, 1937 (aged 43) Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S. Genres Blues, Jazz blues Occupation(s) Singer, Actress Instruments Vocals Years active 1912–1937 Labels Columbia Associated acts Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. Nicknamed The Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s.[1] She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on other jazz vocalists.[2]
Contents
Life
The 1900 census indicates that Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892, a date provided by her mother. The 1910 census showed her as age 16.[3] A birth date of April 15, 1894, appears on subsequent documents and was observed by the entire Smith family. Census data also contribute to controversy about the size of her family. The 1870 and 1880 censuses report three older half-siblings, while later interviews with Smith's family and contemporaries did not include them among her siblings.Smith in 1936
She was the daughter of Laura (born Owens) and William Smith, a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher (he was listed in the 1870 census as a "minister of the gospel", in Moulton, Lawrence, Alabama). He died while his daughter was too young to remember him. By the time she was nine, her mother and a brother had also died. Her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings.[4]
To earn money for their impoverished household, Smith and her brother Andrew began busking on the streets of Chattanooga as a duet: she singing and dancing, he accompanying her on the guitar. Their favorite location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in the heart of the city's African-American community.
In 1904, her oldest brother, Clarence, covertly left home, joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. "If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him," said Clarence's widow, Maud. "That's why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child."[5]
In 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe. He arranged for its managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher, to give Smith an audition. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company already included the well-known singer Ma Rainey. Smith eventually moved on to performing in various chorus lines, making the "81" Theater in Atlanta her home base. There were times when she worked in shows on the black-owned T.O.B.A. (Theater Owners Booking Association) circuit. She would rise to become its biggest star after signing with Columbia Records.
By 1923, when she began her recording career,[6] Smith had taken up residence in Philadelphia. There she met and fell in love with Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7, 1923, just as her first record was released. During the marriage—a stormy one, with infidelity on both sides—Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of the day, heading her own shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own custom-built railroad car. Gee was impressed by the money but never adjusted to show business life or to Smith's bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with another singer, Gertrude Saunders, Smith ended the relationship, although neither of them sought a divorce.
Smith eventually entered a common-law marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle and the antithesis of her first husband. She stayed with him until her death.[4]
Career
All contemporary accounts indicate that while Rainey did not teach Smith to sing, she probably helped her develop a stage presence.[7] Smith began forming her own act around 1913, at Atlanta's "81" Theater. By 1920, she had established a reputation in the South and along the Eastern Seaboard.Portrait of Smith by Carl Van Vechten
In 1920, sales figures of over 100,000 copies of "Crazy Blues," recorded for Okeh Records by the singer Mamie Smith (no relation), pointed to a new market. The recording industry had not directed its product to blacks, but the success of the record led to a search for female blues singers. Bessie Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923 by Frank Walker, a talent agent who had seen her perform years earlier. Her first session for Columbia was on February 15, 1923. For most of 1923, her records were issued on Columbia's regular A-series. When the company established a "race records" series, Smith's "Cemetery Blues" (September 26, 1923) was the first issued.
She scored a big hit with her first release, "Gulf Coast Blues" backed with "Downhearted Blues", which its composer Alberta Hunter had already turned into a hit for Paramount Records. Smith became a headliner on the T.O.B.A. circuit and rose to become its top attraction in the 1920s.[8] Working a heavy theater schedule during the winter and performing in tent shows the rest of the year (eventually traveling in her own railroad car), Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of her day.[9] Columbia nicknamed her "Queen of the Blues," but a PR-minded press soon upgraded her title to "Empress".
Smith had a strong contralto voice[10] that recorded very well from her first record, made during the time when recordings were made acoustically. With the advent of electrical recording (her first electrical recording was "Cake Walking Babies (From Home)", recorded on Tuesday, May 5, 1925),[11] the sheer power of her voice was even more evident. She was also able to benefit from the new technology of radio broadcasting, even on stations in the segregated south. For example, after giving a concert for a white-only audience at a theater in Memphis, Tennessee, in October 1923, she then performed a late-night concert on station WMC, which was well received by the radio audience.[12]
She made 160 recordings for Columbia, often accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, notably Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green.
Broadway
Smith's career was cut short by the Great Depression, which nearly put the recording industry out of business, and the advent of "talkies", which spelled the end of vaudeville. She never stopped performing, however. While the days of elaborate vaudeville shows were over, Smith continued touring and occasionally singing in clubs. In 1929, she appeared in a Broadway musical, Pansy. The play was a flop; top critics said she was its only asset.
Film
In 1929, Smith made her only film appearance, starring in a two-reeler, St. Louis Blues, based on W. C. Handy's song of the same name. In the film, directed by Dudley Murphy and shot in Astoria, Queens, she sings the title song accompanied by members of Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, the Hall Johnson Choir, the pianist James P. Johnson and a string section—a musical environment radically different from any found on her recordings.St. Louis Blues, Smith's only film,1929
Swing era
In 1933, John Hammond, who also mentored Billie Holiday, asked Smith to record four sides for Okeh (which had been acquired by Columbia Records in 1925). He claimed to have found her in semi-obscurity, working as a hostess in a speakeasy on Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia.[13] Smith worked at Art's Cafe on Ridge Avenue, but not as a hostess and not until the summer of 1936. In 1933, when she made the Okeh sides, she was still touring. Hammond was known for his selective memory and gratuitous embellishments.[14]
Smith was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each selection and these Okeh sides, which were her last recordings. Made on November 24, 1933, they serve as a hint of the transformation she made in her performances as she shifted her blues artistry into something that fit the swing era. The relatively modern accompaniment is notable. The band included such swing era musicians as the trombonist Jack Teagarden, the trumpeter Frankie Newton, the tenor saxophonist Chu Berry, the pianist Buck Washington, the guitarist Bobby Johnson, and the bassist Billy Taylor. Benny Goodman, who happened to be recording with Ethel Waters in the adjoining studio, dropped by and is barely audible on one selection. Hammond was not entirely pleased with the results, preferring to have Smith revisit her old blues groove. "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)", both written by Wesley Wilson, continue to be ranked among her most popular recordings.[4] Billie Holiday, who credited Smith as a major influence, along with Louis Armstrong, made her first record for Columbia three days later with the same band.
Death
On September 26, 1937, Smith was critically injured in a car accident while traveling along U.S. Route 61 between Memphis, Tennessee, and Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her lover, Richard Morgan, was driving and misjudged the speed of a slow-moving truck ahead of him. Tire marks at the scene suggested that Morgan tried to avoid the truck by driving around its left side, but he hit the rear of the truck side-on at high speed. The tailgate of the truck sheared off the wooden roof of Smith's old Packard. Smith, who was in the passenger seat, probably with her right arm or elbow out the window, took the full brunt of the impact. Morgan escaped without injuries.
The first people on the scene were a Memphis surgeon, Dr. Hugh Smith (no relation), and his fishing partner, Henry Broughton. In the early 1970s, Hugh Smith gave a detailed account of his experience to Bessie's biographer Chris Albertson. This is the most reliable eyewitness testimony about the events surrounding her death.
After stopping at the accident scene, Hugh Smith examined the singer, who was lying in the middle of the road with obviously severe injuries. He estimated she had lost about a half pint of blood and immediately noted a major traumatic injury to her right arm; it had been almost completely severed at the elbow.[15] Hugh Smith was emphatic that this arm injury alone did not cause her death. Although the light was poor, he observed only minor head injuries. He attributed her death to extensive and severe crush injuries to the entire right side of her body, consistent with a sideswipe collision.[16]
Broughton and Hugh Smith moved the singer to the shoulder of the road. Dr. Smith dressed her arm injury with a clean handkerchief and asked Broughton to go to a house about 500 feet off the road to call an ambulance.
By the time Broughton returned approximately 25 minutes later, Bessie Smith was in shock. Time passed with no sign of the ambulance, so Hugh Smith suggested that they take her into Clarksdale in his car. He and Broughton had almost finished clearing the back seat when they heard the sound of a car approaching at high speed. Smith flashed his lights in warning, but the oncoming car failed to stop and plowed into his car at full speed. It sent his car careening into Bessie Smith's overturned Packard, completely wrecking it. The oncoming car ricocheted off Hugh Smith's car into the ditch on the right, barely missing Broughton and Bessie Smith.[17]
The young couple in the new car did not have life-threatening injuries. Two ambulances arrived on the scene from Clarksdale; one from the black hospital, summoned by Broughton, the other from the white hospital, acting on a report from the truck driver, who had not seen the accident victims.
Bessie Smith was taken to Clarksdale's G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital, where her right arm was amputated. She died that morning without regaining consciousness. After her death, an often repeated but now discredited story emerged that she had died as a result of having been refused admission to a whites-only hospital in Clarksdale. The jazz writer and producer John Hammond gave this account in an article in the November 1937 issue of Down Beat magazine. The circumstances of Smith's death and the rumor promoted by Hammond formed the basis for Edward Albee's 1959 one-act play The Death of Bessie Smith.[18]
"The Bessie Smith ambulance would not have gone to a white hospital, you can forget that," Hugh Smith told Albertson. "Down in the Deep South cotton country, no ambulance driver, or white driver, would even have thought of putting a colored person off in a hospital for white folks."[19]
Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia a little over a week later on October 4, 1937. Her body was originally laid out at Upshur's funeral home. As word of her death spread through Philadelphia's black community, the body had to be moved to the O.V. Catto Elks Lodge to accommodate the estimated 10,000 mourners who filed past her coffin on Sunday, October 3.[20] Contemporary newspapers reported that her funeral was attended by about seven thousand people. Far fewer mourners attended the burial at Mount Lawn Cemetery, in nearby Sharon Hill. Gee thwarted all efforts to purchase a stone for his estranged wife, once or twice pocketing money raised for that purpose.[21]Smith's death certificate
Unmarked grave
The grave remained unmarked until August 7, 1970, when a tombstone—paid for by the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith—was erected.[22]
Dory Previn wrote a song about Joplin and the tombstone, "Stone for Bessie Smith", on her album Mythical Kings and Iguanas.
The Afro-American Hospital, now the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, was the site of the dedication of the fourth historical marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail.[23]
Hit records
Year Single US
Chart[24][nb 1]1923 "Downhearted Blues" 1 "Gulf Coast Blues" 5 "Aggravatin' Papa" 12 "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" 6 "T'ain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" 9 1925 "The St. Louis Blues" 3 "Careless Love Blues" 5 "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle" 8 1926 "I Ain't Got Nobody" 8 "Lost Your Head Blues" 5 1927 "After You've Gone" 7 "Alexander's Ragtime Band" 17 1928 "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" 13 "Empty Bed Blues 20 1929 "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" 15
Selective awards and recognition
Grammy Hall of Fame
Recordings of Bessie Smith were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. This special Grammy Award was established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance".
Bessie Smith: Grammy Hall of Fame Award[26] Year Recorded Title Genre Label Year Inducted 1923 "Downhearted Blues" Blues (Single) Columbia 2006 1925 "St. Louis Blues" Jazz (Single) Columbia 1993 1928 "Empty Bed Blues" Blues (Single) Columbia 1983
National Recording Registry
In 2002, Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues" was included in the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.[27] The board annually selects recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[28]
"Downhearted Blues" was included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001. It is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock 'n' roll.[29]
Inductions
U.S. Postage StampYear Inducted Category Notes 2008 Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC 1989 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 1989 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame "Early influences" 1981 Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame 1980 Blues Hall of Fame
Year Issued Stamp USA 1994 29
cents Commemorative stampU.S. Postal Stamps
Digital remastering
Technical faults in the majority of her original gramophone recordings—especially variations in recording speed, which raised or lowered the apparent pitch of her voice, misrepresented the "light and shade" of her phrasing, interpretation and delivery. They altered the apparent key of her performances (sometimes raised or lowered by as much as a semitone). The "centre hole" in some of the master recordings had not been in the true middle of the master disc, so that there were wide variations in tone, pitch, key and phrasing, as commercially released records revolved around the spindle.
Given those historic limitations, the current digitally remastered versions of her work deliver significant positive differences in the sound quality of Smith's performances. Some critics believe that the American Columbia Records compact disc releases are somewhat inferior to subsequent transfers made by the late John R. T. Davies for Frog Records.[30]
In popular culture
- The 1948 short story "Blue Melody", by J. D. Salinger, and the 1959 play The Death of Bessie Smith, by Edward Albee, are both based on Smith's life and death, but poetic license was taken by both authors; for instance, Albee's play distorts the circumstances of her medical treatment, or lack thereof, before her demise, attributing it to racist medical practitioners.
- Bessie's Back in Town, a musical in production by Barry Edelson, as accurately as possible presents true and major aspects of her life and death, while remaining true to her music.[31]
- The playwright Angelo Parra wrote the 2001 musical The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, with Miche Braden in the title role.
- In the video game series BioShock (1 and 2), Smith is portrayed as a cameo of a character by the name of Grace Holloway. Smith's music can be heard during the loading screen and in the level Paupers Drop, and in the various hallways and rooms of the sunken city. Her 1929 song "I'm Wild About That Thing" additionally makes an anachronistic appearance in its sequel BioShock: Infinite, set in 1912.
- HBO released a movie about Smith, Bessie, starring Queen Latifah, on May 16, 2015.[32]
- The Band's song "Bessie Smith" was about her.[33]
Notes
2. In 2015 HBO made a film commemorating the life of Smith.- Joel Whitburn's methodology for creating pre-1940s chart positions has been criticised,[25] and those listed here should not be taken as definitive.
References
- Jasen, David A.; Gene Jones (September 1998). Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880–1930. Schirmer Books. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-02-864742-5.
- "Bessie Smith: Controversy". SparkNotes. 1937-10-04. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
Further reading
- Albertson, Chris (1991). Liner notes, Bessie Smith: The Complete Recordings, Volumes 1 – 5. Sony Music Entertainment.
- Albertson, Chris (2003). Bessie (revised and expanded ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09902-9.
- Barnet, Andrea (2004). All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913–1930. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books. ISBN 1-56512-381-6.
- Brooks, Edward, The Bessie Smith Companion: A Critical and Detailed Appreciation of the Recordings, New York: Da Capo Press, 1982. ISBN 0-306-76202-1.
- Davis, Angela Y. (1998). Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-45005-X.
- Eberhardt, Clifford (1994). Out of Chattanooga. Chattanooga: Ebco.
- Feinstein, Elaine (1985). Bessie Smith. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-80642-0.
- Grimes, Sara (2000). Backwaterblues: In Search of Bessie Smith. Amherst, Massachusetts: Rose Island Pub. ISBN 0-9707089-0-4.
- Kay, Jackie (1997). Bessie Smith. New York: Absolute. ISBN 1-899791-55-8.
- Manera, Alexandria (2003). Bessie Smith. Chicago: Raintree. ISBN 0-7398-6875-6.
- Martin, Florence (1994). Bessie Smith. Paris: Editions du Limon. ISBN 2-907224-31-X.
- Oliver, Paul (1959). Bessie Smith. London: Cassell.
- Palmer, Tony (1976). All You Need is Love: The Story of Popular Music. New York: Grossman Publishers, Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-11448-0.
- Scott, Michelle R. (2008). Blue Empress: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South in Black Chattanooga. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252075455.
- Welding, Pete; Byron, Tony (eds.) (1991). Bluesland: Portraits of Twelve Major American Blues Masters. New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-93375-1.
- Schuller, Gunther (1968). Early Jazz, Its Roots and Musical Development. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504043-0 (paperback).
External links
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| Library resources about
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