By the late 1920s, Bessie Smith, an orphan who had once sang on the streets of Tennessee, was known as the “Empress of the Blues” and was America’s highest earning black entertainer. Originally hired at 18 as a dancer for a traveling minstrel show and nurtured by blues legend Ma Rainey who took a liking to her, Bessie was soon singing solos, and in 1923 began recording for Columbia. Her debut single, “Downhearted Blues”, was a huge hit. Other notable career tracks included “St. Louis Blues” with a young Louis Armstrong on cornet; “Careless Love Blues”; “Empty Bed Blues”; and the Depression Era prophecy of 1929’s “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”.

         Singing of poverty, working class hardships, loss and grief, sex and drinking, or protesting a rigged justice system, and delivered in a powerful contralto with an earthy, honest, improvisational style, her “race records” resonated like no artist before her. Bessie knew what it was like to be cheated by her record company and her husband, to face the perils of segregation, to be stabbed and arrested, to take multiple lovers of both sexes, and to struggle with drink and her own fierce temper. An early advocate of female empowerment and independence, her impact on such future artists as Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin has been profound.

         Bessie’s career declined in the 1930s, another victim of the Great Depression, and she died tragically in 1937 in a car crash. The blues, jazz, rock, and women’s halls of fame have all recognized her artistry and influence posthumously.       – Steve Williams (4/20/23)