April 15, 1894- Bessie Smith was born into poverty in Tennessee, no one knows for certain exactly what year. She was discovered singing on street corner in Chattanooga as a young girl by the great Blues singer Ma Rainey. When she was 19 years old, Smith married a man, but she had many love affairs with other women on the touring circuit, including the wife of her first musical director. Rainey was probably her first lover. She eventually separated, but never divorced, her husband when Smith’s affairs with other women became a problem in her marriage. Imagine that.
In 1923, Smith released her first recording, Down-Hearted Blues, selling nearly a million copies & making her a musical superstar. She gained the moniker “Empress Of The Blues”, popular with white & black music fans. Her immensely successful “race records”: Down Hearted Blues, St. Louis Blues, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down & Out, & Gimme A Pigfoot & A Bottle Of Beer became all the rage. By the end of the decade Smith had become the highest paid black performer of all time. Smith toured on her own private train with a troupe of 40. She performed & recorded with Louis Armstrong & she starred in the film St. Louis Blues (1929). During the Depression, popular musical tastes changed to jazz & swing & Smith’s style of blues, rooted in vaudeville, had fallen into disfavor with white audiences. Smith found solace in booze & girls.
Her career was beginning to find traction again when, tragically, in 1937, she was killed in an automobile accident while on a concert tour. The circumstances surrounding Smith’s death remain mysterious after nearly 80 years. It seems likely that Smith bled to death while her ambulance drove around in search of a hospital that would take black patients, a situation that was all too common during the era of “Jim Crow” laws. Edward Albee based his terrific 1959 play, The Death Of Bessie Smith, on the end of her life.
Smith’s funeral was held at an African-American Chapter Elks Lodge. 10,000 mourners viewed her coffin. But, there was no money for a proper burial & she was laid to rest in an unmarked grave outside of Philadelphia.
Her husband’s family spent the money from her royalties. 33 years later, in 1970, Janis Joplin, who named Smith as a major influence on her own career, purchased a worthy headstone for Smith. A few months later, Joplin was gone, taken by a drug overdose.
Smith was unquestionably the greatest of blues singer & her influence continues today. She was an inspiration for the vocals of Billie Holiday & Aretha Franklin. Frank Sinatra named her as a favorite. Her music has emotional intensity; her voice brings immediate personal pain, rough, crude & honest.
“I know women that don’t like men. The way they do is a crying sin. It’s dirty but good, oh, yes, it’s dirty but good There ain’t much difference, it’s just dirty but good.” It’s Dirty But Good
2 decades in the making, Queen Latifah produces & stars in Bessie, a new bio-pic from HBO, which begins airing next month. Queen Latifah is the right person for the role & HBO is the best studio for this project. The trailer makes me very excited for this project. Smith’s story is worth telling & getting it right.
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