Bessie Smith
Known as the "Empress of the Blues," Bessie Smith was born
in Chattanooga, Tenn. on April. 15, 1894 and died Sept. 26, 1937. She was
the most successful female blues singer of the 1920s. Smith began her career
as a singer in honky-tonks and tent shows, but in 1923 went to New York
for her first recording session. She was an immediate sensation, and during
the succeeding decade she recorded and toured extensively. She was hearty,
forthright, and totally uninhibited in her performance as well as in her
life.
Because of her impeccable rhythmic sense and her ability to improvise around
the structural confines of the blues, Gunther Schuller, in his book Early
Jazz, calls her the first important jazz singer. The circumstances of
her death, in an automobile accident in Mississippi, were the subject of
a play by Edward Albee (The Death of Bessie Smith, 1960). Smith was
driven miles to a hospital for "niggers" when she was critically
ill despite the nearness of a whites-only hospital. This disgraceful decision
to deny treatment at the nearest hospital is believed by many to have resulted
in her death.
Her black lesbian circle included the equally legendary Ma Rainey and the
male impersonator Gladys Fergusson. Unlike many of her near-contemporaries
(Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker), no biography of her has been mounted
for cinema or television.
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