Bessie Smith, the 6-foot, 200-pound Empress of the Blues, commanded stage and street with a fierce violence and a resonant, endless well of a voice. Born in Chattanooga, Tennesee, in 1894, Smith began her career singing on street corners. Under the...
[more]Bessie Smith, the 6-foot, 200-pound Empress of the Blues, commanded stage and
street with a fierce violence and a resonant, endless well of a voice. Born
in Chattanooga, Tennesee, in 1894, Smith began her career singing on
street corners. Under the mentorship of "Ma" Rainey, one of the most popular performers on the
swanky vaudeville circuit of the 1920s, Smith developed into a seminal blues figure and eventually
outstripped Rainey herself. While Smith's tremendous success gave her
access to the middle-class privileges systematically denied to people of
color, she purposefully rejected white acceptance and lived the life she was
given, following a trajectory of drinking, fighting, fucking, and
roaring out music until her death.
Smith's controversial lifestyle had enough fuel to drive the media hounds of her time to their
grave. Her temper was boundless. After catching her husband in bed with one
of her chorus girls (Smith herself was known to spend many a hot night in bed with
her chorus girls), she viciously beat up the girl and chased her
husband down a New York railroad track firing at him with his own handgun.
She and her niece Ruby Walker were regulars at Helen's Valentine in New
York, a joint where the scene was "two women goin' together, a man and a
man goin' together, and if you (were) interested (they'd) do the same to
you." Smith even ended up in jail after getting physical with rival blues
singer Clara Smith.
But her ruthless living never interfered with her singing. In fact it can be
argued that it
enhanced her performance, her lyrics, and her sound in general. She sang
from the basement of her large heart; she sang her enemies to shame and her
lovers to their knees. In "Ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do," Smith articulates
the uncompromising attitude evident in her personal and professional life:
"There ain't nothing I can do/or nothing I can say/that folks don't
criticize me,/but I'm goin' to/do just as I want to anyway,/and don't care
if they all despise me." In "Send Me to the L'ectric Chair" Smith's
capacity for irony and passion is clear: in a cynical tone she sings about
brutally killing the man she loves, sarcastically pleading with the judge to send
her to her death.
Having made her recording debut in 1923 on Columbia with "Gulf Coast Blues" and "Down
Hearted Blues," Smith stayed with the label for almost ten years. During
that time she recorded with many of the great jazz musicians of the era,
including Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins. Despite being without a
record company after 1933, she continued to draw large
crowds, especially in the South. Wherever she performed she commanded center
stage and controlled the rhythm, development, and tone of every piece she
sang.
Smith's untimely death in 1937 was to become the most
controversial event of her life. After an automobile accident outside of
Clarksdale, Mississippi, Smith bled to death. Although eventually proved
false, the story spread that she died after a white-run hospital refused to
treat her. The incident heightened the racial tensions of the time, while it
also illustrated the force of Smith's faithful fans. Bessie Smith's legacy
is as clear as the emotions she evoked in her listeners; the blues were her
life and her life was the blues.
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