Bessie Smith
Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee as one of seven children. Smith experience a tremendous amount of loss at a young age. Soon she turned to the arts as a means of financial gain and coping. She began to perform as a street singer, until 1912, when she began performing as a dancer in the Moses Stokes minstrel show. This is where she encountered blues vocalist Ma Rainey, who took Smith under her wing, and over the next decade Smith continued to perform at various theaters and on the vaudeville circuit.
Her first recording, for Columbia Records was “Downhearted Blues”, it sold an estimated 800,000 copies and established her as the most successful black vocalist of her time. More than any other performer, she was responsible for introducing the blues into the mainstream of American popular music.
She made 160 recordings for Columbia, often accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, notably Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green. By the end of the 1920s, Smith was the highest-paid black performer of her day, and had earned herself the title "Empress of the Blues."
Bessie Smith was a famously promiscuous bisexual, she is noted for having numerous female lovers throughout her lifetime.
Smith was critically injured in a car crash while traveling along U.S. Route 61 between Memphis, Tennessee, and Clarksdale, Mississippi. She died of her wounds in a Clarkdale, Mississippi hospital. She was 43.
Smith's grave was unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, 1970, paid for by the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith.
Since her death, Bessie Smith’s music continues to win over new fans, and collections of her songs have continued to sell extremely well over the years. She has been a primary influence for countless female vocalists—including Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin and has been immortalized in numerous works including an award winning HBO film starring with Queen Latifah.
