Bessie Smith
The voice of an orphan girl raised in a shack became, on stage, the voice of an empress who stirred an entire era.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people beside her ⏳🌊
- FamilyWilliam Smith
Her father, a Baptist preacher, who died when she was a baby.
- InfluenceMa Rainey
Shared the stage with her in a touring troupe and shaped her early singing style and stage presence.
- PatronFrank Walker
The Columbia Records producer who discovered her and secured her first contract.
- FamilyJack Gee
Her husband, who for a time also served as her manager and was deeply involved in her bookings and finances.
- ColleagueLouis Armstrong
In 1925 they performed together at several sessions, each spurring on the other's music.
- PatronJohn Hammond
He was the producer who arranged her last recording session, with swing players, in 1933.
I. The girl from Chattanooga · 1894–1912 (age 0–18)
(Poverty) She was born in April 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the youngest of seven children. Her father, William Smith, scraped a living from day labor and preached at Baptist services when he could, but he died before she had even learned to walk. The whole family crowded into a single room of a shack, never sure where the next meal would come from. (Loss) Around the age of nine she lost her mother, Laura, and then one of her brothers, one after the other. The orphaned children were raised by the eldest, their big sister Viola. Viola fed her siblings by taking in other people's washing and ironing, and none of the children could afford to stay in school for long. (The street) Instead of school, Bessie looked to the street for money. With her brother Andrew she went to sing in front of the White Elephant Saloon, where Thirteenth and Elm Streets meet. Andrew would pluck the guitar while Bessie lifted her voice, collecting coins from passersby. Bigger than other children her age and deep of voice, she is said to have sung like a grown woman from early on. (Departure) In 1912 her brother Clarence, who had left home earlier to join a traveling troupe, arranged an audition for her with the Moses Stokes company. Clarence was playing a clown in the troupe, and at first the manager took young Bessie on only as a dancer, not a singer. And so the eighteen-year-old girl left her impoverished hometown and entered the world of the touring show.
II. Ma Rainey and the traveling shows · 1912–1920 (age 18–26)
(Meeting) In the Moses Stokes company she met Ma Rainey, already a celebrated blues singer. A story long circulated that Rainey all but kidnapped the young Bessie and taught her to sing, but many scholars regard it as an anecdote inflated by later generations. That the two shared the stage and influenced each other, however, is borne out by many accounts. (Touring) She worked the stages of the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the touring circuit for Black performers. Schedules and conditions were so harsh that performers bitterly joked the initials meant it was tough on Black actors. Low pay, cramped lodgings and segregation were a matter of course. (Independence) Within a few years she had established herself well enough to lead a company under her own name. She headlined at Southern theaters, among them the 81 Theatre in Atlanta. Contemporaries recalled that, with her large frame and booming voice, she had an overwhelming presence onstage. (The voice) It was in these years that she honed her style: a heavy low register pushed straight from the chest without falsetto, and long-drawn notes wrung for every drop of feeling. Here too she acquired her manner as a storyteller, unfolding love, poverty and betrayal with a voice at once matter-of-fact and heartrending.
III. Down Hearted Blues · 1920–1924 (age 26–30)
(Rejection) In the early 1920s, the story goes, she knocked on the doors of several record companies and was turned away every time. Her voice, they reportedly said, was too rough, too Southern. Even Black Swan, a fledgling Black-owned label, is said to have passed on her. (Opportunity) In 1923 Frank Walker, a producer at Columbia Records, sent for her. Walker had taken note of Bessie years earlier, singing in a club in Selma. It was the moment a major white-owned label recognized the potential of the so-called race records market. (Triumph) Her first recording, “Down Hearted Blues,” sold some 780,000 copies within six months of its release. It was an unprecedented showing for a record by a Black woman singer. With this single disc she rose from star of the touring shows to national recording star. (Marriage) That same year she married Jack Gee, who worked as a night watchman. Jack soon appointed himself her manager and involved himself deeply in her bookings and her money. Many colleagues recalled that the marriage was marred from the start by quarrels over money and control.
Her first recording after signing with Columbia, this one disc lifted her from an unknown touring singer to a national star.
- From the opening, with only a single piano beneath her, she casts out the first phrase in a low voice pushed straight from the chest, without falsetto.
- The pianist Clarence Williams steps aside, touching only the chords without showy ornament so that the voice stands fully revealed.
- A call-and-response pattern recurs: she sings a line, and the accompaniment answers back briefly.
- Over the basic blues form (the 12-bar blues), which sets three lines of lyric across twelve bars, you can clearly hear the structure of repeating the first line once more before closing with the last.
IV. Empress of the Blues · 1924–1929 (age 30–35)
(The peak) Her fees reached several hundred dollars a night, and she toured the South and the Midwest in a private railroad car bearing her name. She was among the highest-earning Black entertainers of her day. The car held stage props and even quarters for her company, sparing them some of the hardships of Southern tours, where segregation made lodging hard to find. (Collaboration) In 1925 she recorded a number of songs with Louis Armstrong, among them “St. Louis Blues” and “Careless Love Blues.” Armstrong, a young cornetist out of King Oliver's band, breathed short, plaintive responses in between Bessie's lines. The finest accompanists of the day, among them Charlie Green on trombone and Joe Smith on cornet, put their names to her sessions. (Family) In 1926 she and Jack adopted a young son, Jack Gee Jr. Her touring schedule was murderous and left little time with the child, but she is said to have bought him expensive clothes and toys. (The screen) In 1929 she appeared in “St. Louis Blues,” a short and her only film. The scene in which she sings, almost crying out, to a faithless lover remains the only moving image of her.
One of several sessions with the young Armstrong, fresh from King Oliver's band, it shows two strong personalities trading phrases in balance, neither overpowering the other.
- In the introduction, Armstrong's cornet sets the mood first with a short, plaintive strain.
- The whole song is driven by a conversation-like exchange (interplay) in which Bessie's voice and Armstrong's cornet trade phrases bar by bar, each responding to the other's sound.
- Fred Longshaw's low, sighing harmonies on the reed organ accompaniment lend the song weight.
- True to the form of W. C. Handy, who wrote the song, you can hear its distinctive design, with a contrasting section in a tango-like rhythm (a bridge) inserted between the basic 12-bar blues.
Recorded in early 1927, months before the Great Mississippi Flood swept the South, it was long talked about as a song that seemed to foresee the feelings of those whom the disaster would leave homeless.
- Pianist James P. Johnson's left hand, rolling and repeating in the low register, calls to mind swelling floodwaters.
- Unfolding as a story in which things grow a step worse with each verse, the song moves like a short novel.
- Rather than crying out in passion, she paints her sorrow in a voice that seems to hold itself back.
- Repeating the 12-bar blues while only the situation in the lyrics changes from verse to verse, it exemplifies the storytelling form of the blues.
It was recorded in May 1929, a few months before the Great Depression struck. A song about the people who leave your side once the good times end, it came to sound like a premonition of what was to come.
- Her voice stands out clearly over a small-band accompaniment, with cornet, saxophone and tuba blending with Clarence Williams's piano.
- She sings it calmly, in a tone closer to resignation than anger.
- The contrast between good times and abandonment comes through first in the shifting warmth of her voice, even before the lyrics.
- The slow tempo and long-breathed phrasing lend the whole song weight.
V. The Great Depression and decline · 1929–1933 (age 35–39)
(Collapse) With the stock market crash of 1929, the record industry fell apart. Sales of records, now treated as a luxury, plunged, and in 1931 Columbia declined to renew her contract. A singer who had once sold 780,000 records found herself, overnight, without a label. (Decline) One after another, the vaudeville touring theaters closed their doors. Radio and talking pictures drew audiences away from the theaters with cheaper entertainment. The days of traveling in her own railroad car were over, and she had to take her act to small clubs and tent shows. (Endurance) Even so, she never let go of singing. Her fees shrank, but she kept performing, making the rounds of clubs in the South and the North. Fellow performers recalled that once she stepped onstage, she had lost none of her old majesty. (Comeback) In 1933 the young producer John Hammond called her back into the studio. He placed her in a single session with Jack Teagarden, Frankie Newton, Chu Berry and other swing players of the day, Black and white together. At what would prove to be her last recording as a blues singer, she lent her voice to swing arrangements grown noticeably brighter to suit the times.
Recorded at the final session John Hammond arranged. Even amid arrangements made brighter to keep pace with the swing era, the power of her voice was undiminished.
- She sings over a swing rhythm (a feel of lightly dragging the back of the beat) far faster than the slow blues of her earlier work.
- A swing band blending Jack Teagarden's trombone, Frankie Newton's trumpet and Chu Berry's tenor saxophone gives the song its energy.
- Her volume and low register hold firm, even set beside her debut recordings of 10 years before.
- The lyrics, too, paint a rollicking party, in sharp contrast to the heavy mood of her earlier songs.
VI. The last road · 1933–1937 (age 39–43)
(Steady course) She kept reshaping her act in step with the swing era. The scale was not what it had been, but she went on performing, moving between New York clubs and Southern theaters, and was preparing for a new record contract and a real comeback. (The accident) On September 26, 1937, the car she was riding in collided with a truck on U.S. Route 61 near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her right arm was gravely injured; she was taken to the nearby G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital, a hospital for Black patients, and treated there, but she died of blood loss. (The myth) A story long circulated that she died after being refused admission to a white hospital, and it spread further through playwright Edward Albee's play “The Death of Bessie Smith.” Yet biographer Chris Albertson's research found no evidence to support it. She had been taken to the Black hospital from the start. (Burial) She was buried at Mount Lawn Cemetery in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, but there was no money for a headstone, and for many years her grave went unmarked. In 1970 the singer Janis Joplin, deeply influenced by her songs, split the cost with Juanita Green, a former housekeeper, and a headstone was finally raised.
Lesser-known stories
(A head for business) In an era when promoters routinely cheated performers out of their fees, she is said to have insisted on being paid in cash before the show began. Far from the stereotype of the naive, exploited blues singer, she knew exactly what she was worth and made sure she got it. (Copyright) At the time, most Black women blues singers did not receive even songwriting credit for the songs they sang. Yet several songs, including “Young Woman's Blues,” are registered under her name. It was a rare thing, and a fact confirmed only belatedly, when later scholars went back over the records of her Columbia sessions. (Origins of the kidnapping tale) It is unclear where the story came from that Ma Rainey kidnapped the young Bessie and dragged her into her touring company. Though no record supports it, its dramatic appeal carried it intact into numerous biographies and documentaries. Recent researchers tend not to treat it as fact, but rather as a story handed down.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Race records
(In jazz) Refers to records that American labels in the 1920s classified separately and marketed to Black consumers. Blues, gospel and jazz were mostly issued under this category, and they were advertised and distributed through different channels from records aimed at white buyers. Think of it as building a market by sorting consumers by race, the way a school might split students into separate classes. (Elsewhere) Today the very practice of separating and selling products by race is regarded as discriminatory, and the phrase “race records” survives only as a historical term.
Call and response
(Literal meaning) Just what it says: one side calls (call), the other answers (response). (In jazz) A structure in which one person or instrument tosses out a short phrase and another immediately answers it. It works on the same principle as a church service where the preacher calls out a line and the congregation responds. In the blues, the voice and the accompanying instrument trade phrases this way, as if in conversation.
Blue note
(In jazz) An expressive device in which certain notes of the major scale are lowered slightly or wavered between pitches to create melancholy and tension. On a fixed-pitch instrument such as the piano it cannot be played exactly, so players imitate it by rubbing back and forth between two neighboring notes. The feeling is like flattening a note slightly and bending it, as if sobbing, when you sing a sad song.
12-bar blues
(In jazz) The basic form of the blues, in which three lines of lyrics, four bars each, fill twelve bars to complete one cycle. Its backbone is a pattern of singing the first line, repeating the same words once more, then closing with the last line. Think of it like a round: the set frame repeats over and over, while within it only the lyrics and the feeling keep changing.
Vaudeville
(Literal meaning) A word that came from French, originally meaning a light popular entertainment mixing songs and sketches. (In jazz) Refers to the touring variety shows of early 20th-century America that brought together song, dance, acrobatics and comedy. Much like today's variety programs, they strung short acts together into a single show.
Swing
(In jazz) A rhythmic feel that lightly drags the back of the beat, pushing and pulling, or the 1930s jazz style built on that rhythm. Rather than marching along in strictly equal, clipped steps, it gives the rhythm spring, like letting one foot linger a moment before stepping down. (Elsewhere) Swing also refers to the motion of swinging a bat or a club in baseball or golf.
Interplay
(Literal meaning) Playing (play) traded back and forth between (inter). (In jazz) The way a soloist and the accompanying instruments listen to one another and respond on the spot, trading ideas back and forth. It is much like a soccer match, where players pass the ball and adjust their next move to the other side's movements.