Bessie Smith (1894 - 1937)

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Bessie Smith (Outlines) by Jackie Kay

In this engrossing olio of biography, autobiography, poetry, and fiction, Kay creates an edgy atmosphere by switching focus by means of narrative jumps in and out of Smith's life and music--a chancy strategy, but it works, facilitating the interaction of Kay's and her subject's stories with minimal disorientation. Smith's reputed lesbianism is made prominent, for this book is part of the Outlines series "on leading gay and lesbian writers and creative artists," yet her music and career are amply and lovingly detailed as well. Indeed, this is primarily a warm, personable, evocative, and pleasing portrait of "the Empress of the Blues" that is also interesting as a study of two strong artistic female characters (Kay herself is the second) and the connections between their seemingly disparate lives. Blessed with a snazzy cover, interpolated poetry by Langston Hughes and Pablo Neruda (among others), and a rather abrupt but nice bibliography, this is quite a package, all told, for many sorts of readers. Mike Tribby, From Booklist

The Essential Bessie Smith By Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was crowned the Empress of the Blues, and, while this moniker was well deserved, she was much more. A prolific recording artist, Smith was quite an eclectic performer. In fact, she may have been one of the first true crossover artists. This neat two-disc set gives the listener a good sampling of her wide repertoire. Smith is backed up by some of the best jazz musicians of her era. Her rendition of "St Louis Blues" for example, features the horn work of a young Louis Armstrong. Smith was not above doing such suggestive material as "Kitchen Man" or "Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl" and could breath new life into a pop chestnut like "Alexander's Ragtime Band." And when Smith sang "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," she knew what she was talking about. The title of this album says it all. --Lars Gandil

Bessie Smith Complete Recordings:

More Music...

Reflections Of 1920's And 30's Street Life In The Music Of Bessie Smith

by Ross Whitney

(Written Spring, 1995, California State University, Long Beach, for Christine Forney's course: the History of Women in Music.)

As the saying goes, "you gotta pay the dues if you wanna sing the blues." In no other way than living the kind of violent, promiscuous, hard-drinking street life she sang about, could Bessie Smith have inspired in her audiences the powerful empathy that ultimately won her the title, "Empress of the Blues." Throughout her career, Bessie was respected for being a strong, independent African-American woman with tremendous talent and determination. She expressed great pride in her culture, and gladly participated in its earthy pleasures, regularly indulging her taste for alcohol and sex to extremes. Though her acclaim rapidly crossed racial boundaries, she shunned the icy affections and condescending embraces of the elitist white New York uppercrust, as well as fawning conformists from her own community. How ever much others tried to run roughshod over her, Bessie refused to submit to the slightest abuse without a knock-down, drag-out fight. With few exceptions, she held to her musical ideals with equal tenacity. Though musically illiterate, she regularly collaborated with her pianists to compose and write down her music, and her words frequently touched on pertinent events in her life. Her performance style, too, derives considerably from her own personal and cultural attributes... 

By Joel Snow

Excerpt:

Known as the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her date of birth is uncertain and is variously given as 1894-6, 1898, and 1900. Bessie's career began when she was 'discovered' by none other than Ma Rainey when Ma's revue, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, was passing through Chattanooga around 1912 and she had the occasion to hear young Bessie sing. Ma took Bessie on the road with the show and communicated, consciously or not, the subtleties and intricacies of an ancient and still emerging art form...

Bessie Smith

From the Blue Flame Cafe 

Bessie Smith was the greatest and most influential classic blues singer of the 1920s. Her full-bodied blues delivery coupled with a remarkable self-assuredness that worked its way in and around most every note she sang, plus her sharp sense of phrasing, enabled her to influence virtually every female blues singer who followed. During her heyday, she sold hundreds of thousands of records and earned upwards of $2000 per week, which was a queenly sum in the 1920s. She routinely played to packed houses in the South as well as the North and Midwest. By the time the decade had ended, Smith had become the most respected black singer in America and had recorded a catalog of blues that still stands as the yardstick by which all other female blues singers are measured...

1925-27: Lesbianism in the life of Bessie Smith

By Chris Albertson

I know women that don't like men The way they do is a crying sin. It's dirty but good, oh, yes, it's dirty but good There ain't much difference, it's just dirty but good. "It's Dirty But Good," Peter Tamony (1930)

A section in Chris Albertson's recent biography of Bessie Smith (1972) discusses the "wide range" of the famous Black blues singer's "sexual tastes." The narrative centers around Smith's violent conflict with her husband Jack Gee over the women in Smith's love life. Albertson's account provides a rare glimpse into the hectic affairs and husband-trouble of a Black, female, woman-loving blues singer in the mid-1920s.

For his biography of Bessie Smith, Albertson tape-recorded interviews with, among others, Ruby Walker, Smith's niece by marriage, who spent many years with her aunt as a performer in her shows and later as a close companion. Albertson's account of Bessie Smith's Lesbianism is evidently based on Ruby Walker's recollections. Albertson's biography is written with regard for accuracy of historical detail, and, in reference to conversations he quotes, Albertson says, "All dialogue . . . is taken verbatim from firsthand recollections; it may not give the actual words spoken, but I believe it captures the essence of what was said."

The Black blues songs quoted above indicate that Lesbianism was not an unmentionable subject on those Columbia recordings designed for sale to Black people and called "race records." The touring company organized by Bessie Smith included Boula Lee, a chorister with a sexual interest in other women. Male impersonator Gladys Fergusson is mentioned as an intimate of Bessie Smith's, and another famous blues singer, Bessie Smith's early teacher, Ma Rainey, is cited as a woman-loving woman. Porter Grainger, the Black composer of one of Bessie Smith's musicals, is mentioned as homosexual...

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