Smith, Bessie

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Bessie Smith

Born April 15, 1894

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Died September 26, 1937

Clarksdale, Mississippi

American blues singer and songwriter

"Nobody messed with Bessie."

Some music fans and critics consider Bessie Smith the greatest and most influential blues singer of all time. Her powerful and dramatic style set a standard that other singers followed, and her self-assurance, distinctive personality, and sometimes wild lifestyle made her one of the most flamboyant characters of the Harlem Renaissance. Evident in the many recordings she made (most of which have been reissued since her death) are the raw emotion and underlying spirituality she brought to her music. As reported in Here Me Talkin' to Ya by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, guitarist Danny Barker said that Smith had the same effect on her listeners as the most talented southern preacher: "She could bring about mass hypnotism. When she was performing you could hear a pin drop."

An early start in entertaining

Smith was one of seven children born to an impoverished, part-time Baptist preacher and his wife in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After the deaths of her parents, she was raised by her older sister Viola and much influenced by her brother Clarence, a born entertainer himself who encouraged his little sister to learn to sing and dance. With another brother, Andrew, young Bessie performed for pennies on the street corners of Chattanooga. In 1912 Clarence helped her get a job as a dancer with his own employer, Mose Stokes's Traveling Show, one of many black music-and-comedy revues that moved around the South entertaining African American audiences.

During this period Smith sometimes appeared with a blues singer named Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. The first woman to sing the blues on stage, Ma Rainey would come to be known as the "Mother of the Blues." Over the next few years Smith performed in a number of shows. In one show she was kicked out of the chorus line for being too dark-skinned—even though the show's theme was "Glorifyin' the Brown-skinned Girl." Smith appeared again with Rainey, who no doubt influenced her own singing style, in the Rabbit Foot Minstrel Show.

Became a leading blues singer

In 1918 Smith teamed with another singer named Hazel Green, and the next year she was starring in her own show, Liberty Belles. By 1920 she was well established in the southern states as a leading blues singer. This form of music—forged from a unique blend of elements, including rhythms brought by slaves from Africa, African American spirituals (religious songs), and western European folk music—had been gathering momentum in the first two decades of the twentieth century. As the Harlem Renaissance began, the blues also came into its own as a style of music enjoyed by black and white listeners alike.

The eagerness of music recording companies to benefit from the growing popularity of the blues resulted in a new "race record" industry to capture the voices of dynamic black performers. This industry initially overlooked Smith's considerable talent, as she was first rejected by the Black Swan Phonograph Corporation, which chose to feature singer Ethel Waters (1896–1977; see biographical entry) instead. Okeh Records also turned down Smith, but only a few weeks later, in February of 1923, she signed a contract with Columbia Records.

Popular as a recording artist and performer

Paid $125 for each song she recorded, Smith cut her first record on February 16, 1923. It featured "Downhearted Blues" on one side and "Gulf Coast Blues" on the other and was a huge hit, selling 780,000 copies in six months. Billed by her record company as the "Empress of the Blues," Smith soon became Columbia's bestselling artist. Her contract, however, contained no royalty agreement, meaning that she had no claim to the profits earned from record sales. As a result, Smith earned only $28,575 from the many dozens of recordings she made over the years.

The power and raw emotion of Smith's voice were immediately evident to those who heard her sing—whether in person or on records—and her equally dynamic personality made her unforgettable. The boldness and determination that shone through when Smith sang "T'ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do" were especially admirable to black fans hungry for models of black pride and strength. She wrote some of her own songs, too, including "Back Water Blues," which was inspired by a flood that caused much damage and suffering, and "Poor Man's Blues," a lament about the disparity between rich and poor in America.

Smith continued to tour, becoming more and more popular, especially in the southern states, and earning up to two thousand dollars a week. She preferred to run her own shows, traveling with a special railroad car that could house all the performers in her troupe with space left over for her show tent and stage equipment.

"Nobody messed with Bessie..."

A husky woman with a bad temper, Smith worked hard and played hard. Her niece Ruby Walker, who worked and traveled with her, was quoted as saying: "Nobody messed with Bessie, black or white, it didn't make no difference." Smith reportedly chased away a gang of Ku Klux Klan (KKK; an organization that expresses its hatred of nonwhites [especially blacks], Catholics, and Jews through terrorism) members who tried to disrupt her show, and she once performed after having been stabbed in the side at a party the previous day. She liked to drink alcohol, and she was sexually interested in both men and women. Smith had a stormy relationship with her second husband, Jack Gee (her first husband, Earl Love, died in 1920), and was also linked with a wealthy Chicago bootlegger (seller of illegal liquor) named Richard Morgan.

Smith usually performed for all-black audiences, with only occasional appearances before whites, and her national reputation was based mainly on her recordings. She rarely appeared in New York, but when she did she made a big splash. She made a memorable appearance at one of the famous "integrated" (attended by both black and white guests) parties hosted by the white critic and black culture supporter Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964; see biographical entry) at his swank Manhattan apartment. Smith apparently refused Van Vechten's offer of "a dry martini" (a kind of alcoholic cocktail) with the response, "Ain't you got some whiskey, man...? I don't know about no dry martinis, nor wet ones either." One of the other guests at the party was opera singer Marguerite d'Alvarez, who performed an aria (a melodic piece performed in an opera by a solo singer) and earned a compliment from Smith: "Don't let nobody tell you you can't sing!"

Blues style falls out of favor

In the late 1920s Smith appeared in several musical reviews, including Mississippi Days (1928) and Late Hour Tap Dancers (1929), at Harlem's leading black theaters, the Lincoln and the Lafayette. But she never lingered long in New York, always heading out on tour again. Her one foray onto the Broadway stage was disastrous: Pansy (1929) closed after only three performances. Smith also appeared in a film, St. Louis Blues, produced in 1929.

During the 1930s musical tastes shifted away from the blues toward a more sophisticated kind of singing—a type more in keeping with the swing or big band (created by a group of instruments rather than solo performers) sound that had overtaken jazz. Sales of Smith's records dropped, and her contract with Columbia ended in 1931. She made her last record-ing—for Okeh records—two years later, and she stopped touring. By the middle of the 1930s, however, Smith had begun a comeback, polishing her singing to fit the new style and broadening her range of songs. In 1936 she replaced the hot jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915–1959) at Harlem's famous nightclub, Connie's Inn.

Death came too soon

In 1937, while Smith was on tour in Mississippi with a new show called Broadway Rastus, the car in which she was riding collided with a truck. Her arm was nearly severed and she received massive chest injuries. Smith died at the Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale. Over the years the rumor has persisted that Smith was first refused treatment at an all-white hospital—a common occurrence in the segregated South—but this story has never been proven true. In any case, music fans agree that one of the finest blues singers of all time had died all too soon.

Another famous singer paid a tribute to Smith in 1970. Only a few weeks before her own tragic death from a drug overdose, rock star Janis Joplin—whose rough-edged, bluesy singing style owed much to Smith's example—purchased a headstone for Smith's unmarked grave. The inscription reads "THE GREATEST BLUES SINGER IN THE WORLD WILL NEVER STOP SINGING."