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Bessie Smith

Birth name: Bessie Smith
Birthplace: Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937
Years Active: 1912 – 1937

Dubbed the “Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith was one of the most successful Black musical artists of the 1920s, and one of the highest-paid. She was one of a handful of women singers of the era who brought the Blues to a wider audience. Additionally, Smith’s music was pioneering in its unapologetic expression of sexual freedom, unwavering courage, and female independence.

Born in 1894, Smith had lost her mother, father, and a brother by the age of 9, and was raised by her older sister in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Needing to contribute financially to their family and with limited job prospects considering their age, Smith and her brother Andrew began playing for spare change on the street. In 1912, Smith joined a traveling Vaudeville show as a dancer and singer, and by the early 1920s she had become one of the most popular Blues performers in Vaudeville, lauded for her powerful singing voice and emotional, nuanced delivery.

The major record companies of the early 1920s had released very few records by Black artists, but the growing success of “race records” — Blues recordings marketed to Black audiences — could not be ignored. Smith was signed to the major label, Columbia Records in 1923, and her first release, “Gulf Coast Blues” with “Down Hearted Blues,” sold more than 750,000 copies. She also recorded with many of the great Jazz musicians of that era, including Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins, and Louis Armstrong. Those recordings blended the earthiness of Smith’s Blues style with a subtle Jazz sophistication. Smith’s releases, whether Blues or Jazz, were popular and sold extremely well. By the late 1920s, Smith was also appearing in films and performing in a Broadway musical.

However, in the mid-1930s, with the United States in the midst of the Great Depression, Smith’s Classic Blues style was falling out of favor, as “talkies” (movies with sound) supplanted Vaudeville and Big Band Swing music rose in popularity. She struggled to adapt, but remained a popular live act. Smith’s professional work was infrequent but she was having a resurgence in her music career when she died in an automobile accident in September 1937 at the age of 43.

Smith’s musical style was formed during the same era as her contemporary and one-time bandmate, Ma Rainey. She influenced countless artists, including Gladys Bentley, Dinah Washington, and LaVern Baker. Queen Latifah portrayed Smith in a 2015 biographic film.