Bessie Smith – The Empress Of The Blues Playlist

Vocalist Bessie Smith was hailed “The Empress Of The Blues” despite an all-too-short career that spanned the early 1920s to her untimely death in 1937. In recognition of Women’s History Month, this edition of “Saturday Stream” presents a playlist consisting of 10 of Bessie Smith’s best-known and most popular songs.

Like the career of previous WHM playlist honoree, vocalist Patsy Cline, Bessie Smith’s career was also cut short due to an accident. Born on April 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith’s parents both died before she reached age 10. Raised by siblings, she soon took up busking with her brother accompanying her.

“The Mother Of The Blues” Ma Rainey, saw a 16-year-old Smith singing on the streets of Chattanooga. Rainey became a mentor, taking Smither with her on tour for several years.

Smith’s first professional recording was the 1923 single, “Downhearted Blues” which became her first No. 1 hit record. Despite further success with hit singles such as “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” “T’ain’t Nobody’s Biz-Ness if I Do,” “The St. Louis Blues,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” and “Careless Love Blues,” Smith only received modest royalty payments from the record labels (namely, Columbia and Okeh) that sold millions of her records. Smith was the composer of some songs she recorded, writing “Young Woman’s Blues” and “You’ve Been a Good Ole Wagon,” among others.

Smith was accompanied by many talented musicians throughout her career, including Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Green, Coleman Hawkins, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith and Fred Longshaw, among many others. As her career progressed, Smith’s blues-based approach was influenced by the newly popularized forms of jazz. She relocated to the Philadelphia area, but The Great Depression that dominated the early 1930s dampened Smith’s career success.

Noted record producer John Hammond was responsible for a November 1933 session that became Smith’s final recordings. With advancements in recording technology, the sessions produced higher fidelity singles such as “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)” and “Take Me for a Buggy Ride.”

In a poignant essay written fro NPR Music’s list of 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women, Gwen Thompkins wrote of Smith:

She was big and brown and built high off the ground — “a hell of a woman,” men called her, but most women said she was “rough.” And while there were other blues singers in the first half of the 20th century — some who shared her surname — none could be mistaken for Bessie Smith. Not Mamie Smith or Clara or Trixie or Ruby or Laura.

None of the others could sing with her combination of field holler and Jazz Age sophistication. None could throw her voice from the stage — without a microphone — and make a balcony seat feel like the front row. None made such an artistic impression on her contemporaries in jazz, or her disciples in rock ‘n’ roll. That’s because she was the “Empress of the Blues” — and empress is, by definition, a solo gig …

While other singers sidled up to a blues — insinuating, cajoling and even whispering to convey a point — Smith launched something like a St. Crispin’s Day attack on all 12 bars (or 16, or eight, depending on the song). In her phrasing, embellishments and even her breaths, she was communicating the kind of outward urgency and inner stillness that often signals the telling of an absolute truth …

There’s no overestimating the influence Smith and [Louis] Armstrong had on American musicians, particularly in their collaborations and interpretations of the blues. Smith’s blues — the way she streamlined the notes to her songs, making familiar melodies sound idiosyncratic, personal and authentic — encouraged jazz musicians to approach their instruments vocally …

Thompkins essay also described Smith as “the first bisexual, alcoholic, horsewhipped-by-segregationists, beat-out-of-songwriting-royalties, lemonade-making, dark-skinned singing-sensation whose husband cheated on her with a light-skinned ‘Becky with the good hair.’”

A profile of Smith authored in 1969 by Carman Moore for The New York Times captured the vocalist’s influence, writing:

“[Smith] used to spit on the ground. She could cuss you out to your face. She drank her gin straight out of the bottle. She spent money like it was going out of style. But she was “the Empress,” an absolute ruler, and she knew it …

“She functioned as a fountainhead not only of blues phrasing style but of jazz vocal instrumental arranging and popular music vocal style as well. Literally thousands of jazz and pop singers, black and white, have been in her debt since her death, but by today few are aware of the roots of their style …

Bessie’s magic was that she could bring to the listener the intimacy of the country blues while projecting with perfect musicianship and imagination the worldly qualities of the new …

As kind as she was tough, as country as she was worldly, Bessie Smith brought to her work a musicianship touched by genius. Viewed but dimly through the imperfect medium of early 78 r.p.m. recordings, and supported in an early-jazz accompaniment style that was itself just borning, the art of Bessie Smith nonetheless stands as one of the landmarks of musical history.”

Smith tragically died at age 43 when she was in a car accident along a stretch of US Highway 61 between Memphis and Clarksdale, Mississippi. The circumstances of the crash were detailed in her Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame essay (Smith was posthumously inducted in 1989 in the Early Influences category), stating:

In September 1937, just as she was about to enter the Swing Era spotlight, Bessie Smith was fatally injured in an automobile accident on a dark Mississippi highway. It was falsely reported that she was taken to a whites-only hospital and turned away, and this romanticized story was perpetuated for close to thirty-five years. The truth is that Bessie was taken straight to the G T . Thomas Hospital, in [Clarksdale], where she died a few hours later.

Thousands attended Smith’s funeral in Philadelphia on October 4, 1937. Smith’s grave went unmarked for many years. Janis Joplin, who was heavily influenced by Smith, was integral in getting headstone placed at Smith’s gravesite, which occurred in 1971, shortly before Joplin’s own tragic death.

She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it,” Joplin is reported to have said.

In addition to Joplin, countless other singers championed Smith’s influence, such as Dianah Washington, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt and beyond.

“It is impossible to overestimate the impact of Bessie Smith on the history of modern music,” said Bonnie Raitt. “For sheer power and emotion, she remains one of the greatest blues singers of all time, and is still influencing blues and jazz artists today.”

Below is WHM playlist featuring 10 songs recorded by The Empress Of The Blues Bessie Smith during her all-too-short career in the 1920s and 1930s featuring many of the songs mentioned above.

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Source: JamBase.com