Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was was one of the most popular and important blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s. Known as the Empress of the Blues, she was considered perhaps the greatest vocal talent of her era.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s Musician was one of the most popular and important blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s. Known as the Empress of the Blues, she was considered perhaps the greatest vocal talent of her era. Her work heavily influenced not only other Blues singers of her day, but the great Jazz vocalists to come. Please welcome Bessie Smith.
Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 15, 1894, though there is some controversy about the accuracy of this date. Her father, William Urie, was a manual laborer and Baptist preacher who died when Bessie was very young. Her mother, Laura, took care of the children until her own death when Bessie was just 9. After that Bessie was raised by her older sister Viola.
Bessie described her early years as a “wretched childhood.” Her family lived in poverty or near poverty for much of her youth, which meant that Bessie didn’t really have the luxury of receiving an education. Instead, she spent her days with her brother busking on a busy Chattanooga street corner to earn money for her family. She would sing and dance while her brother accompanied her on the guitar.
When Bessie was 10, her oldest brother Clarence left home to join a traveling vaudeville troupe run by Moses Stokes. Bessie was desperate to join with her brother, but was deemed too young at the time. Eight years later in 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes Troupe and helped Bessie get an audition. Because the Stokes Troupe already featured vaudeville superstar Ma Rainey as their premiere singing talent, Bessie was hired as a dancer rather than a singer.
Just a year later in 1913, Bessie formed her own act out of an Atlanta theater which she made her home base. She became a premiere performer on the Black-owned Theater Owners Booking Association circuit. By 1920, Bessie had earned quite a reputation for herself in the South and Southeast as a “can’t miss” performer.
At the same time, the recording industry was evolving as blues legends like singer Mamie Smith (no relation) started putting out records that were flying off the shelves. This was new in the U.S. and represented a sea change in the perceived marketability of Black artists to predominantly white target audiences, particularly with regard to Black women who sang the blues.
Bessie recognized the opportunity afforded by this newfound hunger for blues records, and began her recording career three years later in 1923. She was quickly signed to Columbia Records, and became the first artist released under their newly formed division called “race records”. Her first record from Columbia was a major hit, and Columbia’s marketing department began advertising Bessie as Queen of the Blues. The press gave Bessie an upgrade, eventually landing on Empress of the Blues instead.
When not recording, Bessie spent much of the 1920s still working the Black theater circuit in the South. This eventually made her the highest paid Black entertainer in America. Audiences loved her music because it stressed independence and even sexual freedom, and affirmed the value of the working class while denying a perceived need to alter behavior in order to gain respect. She even famously bought her own 72-foot-long railroad car so that she could travel from town to town in comfort and style.
In 1923, Bessie married a security guard named Jack Gee, but from almost the start the marriage was highly tumultuous due to infidelity on both sides. Bessie was bisexual and her affairs with other women particularly bothered her husband, who never fully accepted his wife’s sexual orientation. In 1929, Bessie found out that Jack was cheating on her with another well-known singer. This was the last straw. The two separated, though neither sought a formal divorce. After the marriage dissolution, Bessie eventually started a relationship with an old friend named Richard Morgan and the two remained together until Bessie’s death.
Over the course of her time with Columbia Records, Bessie made more than 160 recordings, many of which featured other musical greats from the period like Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins. Bessie’s strong contralto voice recorded particularly well on the technology of the day. And yet despite the bestselling records, many people, both Black and white, and even her fans, considered Bessie to be a rough woman and sometimes even too rough, essentially a euphemism for being “low class.”
With the start of the Great Depression in 1929 and the subsequent destruction of the recording industry, Bessie’s career was stopped in its tracks. The advent of the talking picture was also no help, as its introduction was the death knell for the vaudeville industry. Still, Bessie kept working when she could, including a turn on Broadway and a role in a film called St. Louis Blues.
In 1933, John Henry Hammond, who was also a mentor to Jazz legend Billie Holiday, asked Bessie to make a record for Okeh Records. These were the last recordings she ever made, and indicated a transformation between her traditional blues work and a newer sound more in line with the swing jazz of the day.
Just four years later, on September 26, 1937, Bessie was killed in a car crash while driving with her partner, Richard Morgan, on US Route 61 in Tennessee. Though Morgan sustained no serious injuries, Bessie’s arm was sheered off and she sustained massive internal trauma. Beyond the devastation Bessie’s death caused her fans, friends, and family, for years there were rumors that she succumbed to her injuries because the ambulance took her to a whites-only hospital that refused to admit her because she was Black. This often-repeated story formed the basis for playwright Edward Albee's 1959 play called “The Death of Bessie Smith,” but this version of events has since been discredited by historians.
Bessie was buried in Philadelphia on October 4, 1937. Her funeral was attended by approximately 7,000 mourners.
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