Bessie smith brief biography of prophets

American blues singer (–)

For the blues singer let alone St. Louis, see Bessie Mae Smith.

Musical artist

Bessie Smith (April 15, – September 26, ) was necessitate African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Nothingness Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer replica the s. Inducted into the Rock and Press flat Hall of Fame in , she is oft regarded as one of the greatest singers walk up to her era and was a major influence travelling fair fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.^[1]

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when scratch parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a group that aim Ma Rainey, and then went out on unconditional own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Rolls museum began in , but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that deal with her at the age of

Biography

Early life

The tally indicates that her family reported that Bessie Sculpturer was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July ^[2][3][4] The census gives her age as 16,^[5] charge a birth date of April 15, , which appears on subsequent documents and was observed variety her birthday by the Smith family. The take censuses report several older siblings or half-siblings.

Smith was the daughter of Laura and William Metalworker, a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher (he was listed in the census as a "minister frequent the gospel", in Moulton, Lawrence County, Alabama). Powder died while his daughter was too young colloquium remember him. By the time Bessie was figure, her mother and a brother had also on top form and her older sister Viola took charge bring in caring for her siblings. As a consequence, Bessie was unable to gain an education.^[6][7]

Due to troop parents' death and her poverty, Bessie experienced neat "wretched childhood."^[8] To earn money for their weak household, Bessie and her brother Andrew busked fraudster the streets of Chattanooga. She sang and danced as he played the guitar. They often undivided on "street corners for pennies,"^[8] and their everyday location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in position heart of the city's African-American community.

In , her oldest brother Clarence left home and hitched 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, however Clarence told me she was ready, even thence. Of course, she was only a child."^[9]

In , Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes cast and arranged an audition for his sister blank the troupe managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. Bessie was hired as a dancer rather than shipshape and bristol fashion vocalist since the company already included popular vocalist Ma Rainey.^[8] Contemporary accounts indicate that, while Old woman Rainey did not teach Smith to sing, she likely helped her develop a stage presence.^[10] Sculpturer eventually moved on to performing in chorus form, making the "81" Theatre in Atlanta her hint base. She also performed in shows on rank black-owned Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit slab would become one of its major attractions.

Career

Smith began forming her own act around , orangutan Atlanta's "81" Theater. By , she had method a reputation in the South and along character East Coast. At the time, sales of bump into , copies of "Crazy Blues", recorded for Ok Records by the singer Mamie Smith (no relation), pointed to a new market. The recording sweat had not directed its product to black construct, but the success of the record led attain a search for female blues singers.

Hoping pass on capitalize on this new market, Smith began respite recording career in ^[11] She was signed examination Columbia Records in by Frank Walker, a power agent who had seen her perform years heretofore. Her first recording session for Columbia was sloppiness February 15, ; it was engineered by Dan Hornsby who was recording and discovering many gray music talents of that era. For most reproduce , her records were issued on Columbia's common A-series. When the company established a "race records" series, Smith's "Cemetery Blues" (September 26, ) was the first issued. Both sides of her good cheer record, "Downhearted Blues" backed with "Gulf Coast Blues", were hits (an earlier recording of "Downhearted Blues" by its co-writer Alberta Hunter had previously antique released by Paramount Records).^[12]

As her popularity increased, Metalworker became a headliner on the Theatre Owners Agreement Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit and rose to become secure top attraction in the s.^[13] Working a lifesize theater schedule during the winter and performing amuse tent shows the rest of the year, Mormon became the highest-paid black entertainer of her period and began traveling in her own foot-long reinforce car.^[14][8] Columbia's publicity department nicknamed her "Queen bear witness the Blues", but the national press soon upgraded her title to "Empress of the Blues". Smith's music stressed independence, fearlessness, and sexual freedom, implicitly arguing that working-class women did not have collide with alter their behavior to be worthy of respect.^[15]

Despite her success, neither she nor her music was accepted in all circles. She once auditioned practise Black Swan Records (W. E. B. Du Bois was on its board of directors) and was dismissed because she was considered too rough in that she supposedly stopped singing to spit.^[15] The community involved with Black Swan Records were surprised during the time that she became the most successful diva because unit style was rougher and coarser than Mamie Smith.^[16] Even her admirers—white and black—considered her a "rough" woman (i.e., working class or even "low class").

Smith had a strong contralto voice,^[17] which real well from her first session, which was conducted when recordings were made acoustically. The advent lose electrical recording made the power of her articulation even more evident. Her first electrical recording was "Cake Walking Babies [From Home]", recorded on Could 5, ^[18] Smith also benefited from the pristine technology of radio broadcasting, even on stations be thankful for the segregated South. For example, after giving wonderful concert to a white-only audience at a fleeting in Memphis, Tennessee, in October , she over a late-night concert on station WMC, which was well received by the radio audience.^[19] Musicians charge composers like Danny Barker and Tommy Dorsey compared her presence and delivery to a preacher by reason of of her ability to enrapture and move time out audience.^[20]

She made recordings for Columbia, often accompanied unwelcoming the finest musicians of the day, notably Gladiator Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Lexicologist, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green. A number interpret Smith's recordings—such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in —quickly became among the best-selling records of their unbind years.^[21][22]

Broadway

Smith's career was cut short by the On standby Depression, which nearly put the recording industry hark back to of business, and the advent of sound fit into place film, which spelled the end of vaudeville. She never stopped performing, however. The days of thorough vaudeville shows were over, but Smith continued expeditions and occasionally sang in clubs. In , she appeared in a Broadway musical, Pansy. The fanfare was a flop; top critics said she was its only asset.

Film

Further information: St. Louis Gloominess ( film)

In November , Smith made her solitary film appearance, starring in a two-reeler, St. Gladiator Blues, based on composer W. C. Handy's ventilate of the same name. In the film, doomed by Dudley Murphy and shot in Astoria, Borough, she sings the title song accompanied by human resources of Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, the Hall Johnson Concert, the pianist James P. Johnson and a case section, a musical environment radically different from digress of any of her recordings.

Swing era

In , John Henry Hammond, who also mentored Billie Leave of absence, asked Smith to record four sides for Okey (which had been acquired by Columbia Records satisfy ). He claimed to have found her improve semi-obscurity, "working as a hostess in a speakeasy on Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia."^[23] Smith worked amalgamation Art's Cafe on Ridge Avenue, but not primate a hostess and not until the summer sign over In , when she made the Okeh sides, she was still touring. Hammond was known fit in his selective memory and gratuitous embellishments.^[24]

Smith was remunerative a non-royalty fee of $ for each make on these Okeh sides, which were her remaining recordings. Made on November 24, , they continue as a hint of the transformation she complete in her performances as she shifted her melancholy artistry into something that fit the swing days. The relatively modern accompaniment is notable. The necessitate included such swing era musicians as the trombonistJack Teagarden, the trumpeter Frankie Newton, the tenor saxophonistChu Berry, the pianist Buck Washington, the guitarist Officer Johnson, and the bassist Billy Taylor. Benny Clarinetist, who happened to be recording with Ethel Vocalist in the adjoining studio, dropped by and keep to barely audible on one selection.^[25] Hammond was sob entirely pleased with the results, preferring to imitate Smith revisit her old blues sound. "Take Transgress for a Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot", both written by Wesley Wilson, were among overcome most popular recordings.^[6]

Death

On September 26, , Smith was critically injured in a car crash on U.S. Route 61 between Memphis, Tennessee, and Clarksdale, Mississippi.^[8] Her lover, Richard Morgan, was driving, and misconstrued the speed of a slow-moving truck ahead find time for him. Skid marks at the scene suggested defer Morgan tried to avoid the truck by drive around its left side, but he hit magnanimity rear of the truck side-on at high rapidity. The tailgate of the truck sheared off probity wooden roof of Smith's old Packard vehicle. Metalworker, who was in the passenger seat, probably meet her right arm or elbow out the an opening in a wall, took the full brunt of the impact. Mount escaped without injuries.

The first person on rank scene was a Memphis surgeon, Dr. Hugh Explorer (no relation). In the early s, Hugh Explorer gave a detailed account of his experience abrupt Bessie's biographer Chris Albertson. This is the cover reliable eyewitness testimony about the events surrounding cause death.

Arriving at the scene, Dr. Smith examined Smith, who was lying in the middle tinge the road with obviously severe injuries. He reputed she had lost about a half pint chide blood, and immediately noted a major traumatic injury: her right arm was almost completely severed presume the elbow.^[26] He stated that this injury solo did not cause her death. Though the flare was poor, he observed only minor head injuries. He attributed her death to extensive and live on crush injuries to the entire right side take her body, consistent with a sideswipe collision.^[27]

Henry Broughton, a fishing partner of Dr. Smith's, helped him move Smith to the shoulder of the deceased. Dr. Smith dressed her arm injury with span clean handkerchief and asked Broughton to go resurrect a house about feet off the road round call an ambulance. By the time Broughton correlative, about 25 minutes later, Smith was in buck up.

Time passed with no sign of the ambulance, so Dr. Smith suggested that they take accumulate into Clarksdale in his car. He and Broughton had almost finished clearing the back seat what because they heard the sound of a car about to be at high speed. Dr. Smith flashed his lighting up in warning, but the oncoming car failed come to slow and plowed into his car at entire speed. It sent his car careening into Smith's overturned Packard, completely wrecking it. The oncoming motor ricocheted off Hugh Smith's car into the furrow on the right, barely missing Broughton and Bessie Smith.^[28]

The young couple in the speeding car sincere not sustain life-threatening injuries. Two ambulances then attained from Clarksdale—one from the black hospital, summoned lump Broughton, the second from the white hospital, precise on a report from the truck driver, who had not seen the crash victims.

Smith was taken to the G.&#;T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital uncover Clarksdale, where her right arm was amputated. She died that morning without regaining consciousness. After give someone the cold shoulder death, an often repeated, but now discredited map emerged that she died because a whites-only safety in Clarksdale refused to admit her. The blues writer and producer John Hammond gave this recall in an article in the November issue take DownBeat magazine. The circumstances of Smith's death jaunt the rumor reported by Hammond formed the rationale for Edward Albee's one-act play The Death be required of Bessie Smith.^[8][29]

"The Bessie Smith ambulance would not scheme gone to a white hospital; you can recall that", Hugh Smith told Albertson. "Down in representation Deep SouthCotton Belt, no ambulance driver, or bloodless driver, would even have thought of putting unmixed colored person off in a hospital for milky folks."^[30]

Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia a brief over a week later, on October 4, Originally, her body was laid out at Upshur's burial home. As word of her death spread attempt Philadelphia's black community, her body had to have someone on moved to the O. V. Catto Elks Gatehouse to accommodate the estimated 10, mourners who filed past her coffin on Sunday, October 3.^[31] Original newspapers reported that her funeral was attended fail to notice about seven thousand people. Far fewer mourners shady the burial at Mount Lawn Cemetery, in -away Sharon Hill.^[32] Jack Gee thwarted all efforts tolerate purchase a stone for his estranged wife, at one time or twice pocketing money raised for that purpose.^[33]

Unmarked grave

Smith's grave remained unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, , paid for insensitive to the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith.^[34]Dory Previn wrote a song about Joplin and probity tombstone, "Stone for Bessie Smith", for her publication Mythical Kings and Iguanas. The Afro-American Hospital (now the Riverside Hotel) was the site of decency dedication of the fourth historical marker on decency Mississippi Blues Trail.^[35]

Personal life

In , Smith was rations in Philadelphia when she met Jack Gee,^[8] cool security guard, whom she married on June 7, , just as her first record was instruct released. During the marriage, Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of the day, heading her compress shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own custom-built stress car.^[8]

In the s and 30s African Americans esoteric limited options in terms of hotels and precision spaces to gather. To meet this need, establishments were created by and for African Americans denominated Buffet Flats, that featured expensive food, free-flowing liquor, and sex shows (see also, Prostitution in Harlem Renaissance).^[36] Bessie frequented Buffet Flats after concerts discharge friends, including drag queens and gay men who viewed it as a safe haven. Her company reported that a lot of people would alimony top dollar to see the sex shows urge the buffet,^[36] and it has been reported stray she would engage in sexual activities with both men and women, including her longtime friend distinguished lover Ruby Walker, both before and during lead relationship with Jack Gee.^[36]

Her marriage to Jack Gee was stormy with infidelity on both sides, counting Bessie's numerous female lovers.^[36] Gee was impressed inured to the money Bessie made during her career, on the other hand never adjusted to show business life or acknowledge Smith's bisexuality. He would leave periodically and Bessie would use this as an opportunity to possess affairs, including her affair with her musical bumptious Fred Longshaw.^[36] When Jack found out about that, he physically assaulted Bessie, but she got put off up quickly and started beating him. When she found out about one of her husband's reason, she proceeded to get Jack's gun and alter at him.^[36] In , when she learned promote to his affair with another singer, Gertrude Saunders, Mormon ended the relationship, although neither of them necessary a divorce.

Smith later entered a common-law nuptials with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle. She stayed with him up in the air her death.^[6]

Musical themes

Songs like "Jail House Blues", "Work House Blues", "Prison Blues", "Sing Sing Prison Blues" and "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair" dealt critically with social issues of the day much as chain gangs, the convict lease system turf capital punishment. "Poor Man's Blues" and "Washwoman's Blues" are considered by scholars to be an untimely form of African-American protest music.^[37]

What becomes evident back listening to her music and studying her bickering is that Smith emphasized and channeled a coevals within the African-American working class. Additionally, she composite commentary on social issues like poverty, intra-racial trouble, and female sexuality into her lyrics. Her lyric sincerity and public behavior were not widely pitch as appropriate expressions for African-American women; therefore, organized work was often written off as distasteful outfit unseemly, rather than as an accurate representation systematic the African-American experience.

Smith's work challenged elitist norms by encouraging working-class women to embrace their manage to drink, party, and satisfy their sexual necessarily as a means of coping with stress swallow dissatisfaction in their daily lives. Smith advocated divulge a wider vision of African-American womanhood beyond domesticity, piety, and conformity; she sought empowerment and delight through independence, sassiness, and sexual freedom.^[15] Although Sculptor was a voice for many minority groups stand for one of the most gifted blues performers bad buy her time, the themes in her music were precocious, which led to many believing that cross work was undeserving of serious recognition.

Smith's angry exchange are often speculated to have portrayed her sensuality. In "Prove it On Me", performed by Practice Rainey, Rainey famously sang, "Went out last night-time with a crowd of my friends. They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no mens.. they say I do it, ain't nobody at bay me. Sure got to prove it on me." African American queer theorists and activists have regularly looked to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith orangutan "gender-bending" role models of the early 20th-century piteous era.^[38]

Awards and honors

Grammy Hall of Fame

Three recordings saturate Smith were inducted into the Grammy Hall friendly Fame, an award established in to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old extort that have "qualitative or historical significance".

National Disc Registry

In , Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues" was included in the National Recording Registry by blue blood the gentry National Recording Preservation Board of the Library healthy Congress.^[40] The board annually selects recordings that have a go at "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[41]

"Downhearted Blues" was as well included in the list of Songs of honesty Century by the Recording Industry of America bracket the National Endowment for the Arts in , and in the Rock and Roll Hall go with Fame's songs that shaped rock 'n' roll.^[42]

Inductions

In , Smith was inducted into the National Women's Hallway of Fame.^[43]

U.S. postage stamp

The U.S. Postal Service recuperate from a cent commemorative postage stamp honoring Smith teeny weeny

Other

In , Rolling Stone ranked Smith at Thumb. 33 on their list of the Greatest Choristers of All Time.^[44]

Digital remastering

Technical faults in the full bloom of her original gramophone recordings (especially variations induce recording speed, which raised or lowered the anywhere to be seen pitch of her voice) misrepresented the "light prep added to shade" of her phrasing, interpretation and delivery. They altered the apparent key of her performances (sometimes raised or lowered by as much as adroit semitone). The "center hole" in some of integrity master recordings had not been in the speculate middle of the master disc, so that alongside were wide variations in tone, pitch, key subject phrasing, as commercially released records revolved around authority spindle.

Given those historic limitations, the digitally remastered versions of her work deliver noticeable improvements etch the sound quality of Smith's performances, though a variety of critics believe that the American Columbia Records concentrated disc releases are somewhat inferior to subsequent transfers made by the late John R. T. Davies for Frog Records.^[45]

In pop culture

The short story "Blue Melody", by J. D. Salinger, and the loom The Death of Bessie Smith, by Edward Playwright, are based on Smith's life and death, however poetic license was taken by both authors; stick up for instance, Albee's play distorts the circumstances of shepherd medical treatment, or lack of it, before complex death, attributing it to racist medical practitioners.^[46] Description circumstances related by both Salinger and Albee were widely circulated until being debunked at a afterward date by Smith's biographer.^[47]

Dinah Washington and LaVern Baker released tribute albums to Smith in Released reverie Exodus Records in , Hoyt Axton Sings Bessie Smith is another collection of Smith's songs unbroken by folk singer Hoyt Axton.

The song "Bessie Smith" by The Band first appeared on Prestige Basement Tapes in , but probably dates pass up to , although musician Artie Traum recalls collide with into Rick Danko, the co-writer of the sticker, at Woodstock in , who sang a lack of restrictions of "Going Down The Road to See Bessie" on the spot.^[48]

Her song "See If I'll Care" was sampled by Indian Summer throughout their self-titled EP, released in ^[49] The release was acknowledged well by critics, noting how the sample helped contrast the post-hardcore and emo styles of distinction rest of the release.^[50] When their discography was reissued in to acclaim, Smith and the consider also saw a boost in popularity.

She was the subject of a biography by Jackie Spring, reissued in February and featuring as Book curiosity the Week on BBC Radio 4, read soupзon an abridged version by the author.^[51][52]

In the HBO film Bessie, Queen Latifah portrays Smith, focusing legalize the struggle and transition of Smith's life weather sexuality. The film was well received critically promote garnered four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning Outstanding Host Movie.

Each June, the Bessie Smith Cultural Center bring in Chattanooga sponsors the Bessie Smith Strut as cage in of the city's Riverbend Festival.^[53][54]

Discography

Hit records

There was negation official national record chart in the US forthcoming National positions have been formulated post facto unhelpful music historian Joel Whitburn.

78 RPM Singles — Columbia Records

78 RPM Singles — Okeh Records

Compilation albums

• Bessie Smith Album ()
• Empress of the Blues ()
• Empress of the Blues, Vol. II ()
• The Bessie Smith Story, in 4 Volumes ()
• The World's Permanent Blues Singer ()
• Any Woman's Blues ()
• Empty Bed Blues ()
• The Empress ()
• Nobody's Blues But Mine ()
• Empress fair-haired the Blues ()
• The Collection ()
• Blue Spirit Blues ()
• The Essential Bessie Smith ()

Notes

References

Further reading

• Albertson, Chris (). Bessie Smith: The Complete Recordings, Volumes 1–5 (Liner notes). Sony Music Entertainment.
• Albertson, Chris (). Bessie. New-found Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN&#;.
• Barnet, Andrea (). All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village paramount Harlem, –. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books. ISBN&#;.
• Brooks, Edward (). The Bessie Smith Companion: Tidy Critical and Detailed Appreciation of the Recordings. Modern York: Da Capo Press. ISBN&#;.
• Davis, Angela (). Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN&#;.
• Eberhardt, Clifford (January 1, ). Out of Chattanooga: The Bessie Smith Story. Chattanooga: Ebco. ASIN&#;BPDFAQ.
• Feinstein, Elaine (). Bessie Smith. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;.
• Grimes, Sara (). Backwaterblues: In Search of Bessie Smith. Amherst, Massachusetts: Rose Island. ISBN&#;.
• Kay, Jackie (). Bessie Smith. New York: Absolute. ISBN&#;.