Bessie Smith
“The Empress of the Blues, whose powerful voice and tragic life shaped American popular music.”
In 1923 Columbia Records released her debut single 'Downhearted Blues,' which sold over half a million copies in its first year and made the 31-year-old a national sensation. The record crowned her the 'Empress of the Blues' and the highest-paid Black entertainer of the decade. She became a star in 1923.
From Street Corners to Stardom
Orphaned young, Bessie Smith sang on Chattanooga streets for coins with her guitar-playing brother. She toured in tent shows alongside mentor Ma Rainey before striking out on her own.
The Empress of the Blues
Her 1923 debut for Columbia was a runaway hit, and her powerful, unamplified voice could fill a tent without a microphone. Through the 1920s she became the highest-paid Black entertainer in America, touring in her own railroad car.
Legacy
The Depression and changing tastes eroded her recording career, and she died after a car crash in 1937. Her influence runs through Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson and Janis Joplin, and she entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
Career Timeline
- 1894Born Elizabeth Smith in Chattanooga. Year later argued as 1892.
- 1923Columbia. Downhearted Blues. The empress years begin.
- 1929St. Louis Blues, the two-reel film.
- 1931Columbia lets her go. She stays on the road.
- 1937Dies in Clarksdale, Mississippi, after a wreck on U.S. 61.
- 1970A stone finally goes on the grave. Janis Joplin helps pay.
Biggest Hits
- Her grave near Philadelphia lay unmarked for over 30 years until Janis Joplin and Juanita Green paid for a headstone in 1970.
- She made just one film, the 1929 two-reeler 'St. Louis Blues,' which preserves the only footage of her performing.
The Moment You Remember
Her 1925 recording of <em>St. Louis Blues</em>, with Louis Armstrong's cornet answering her voice phrase by phrase, remains one of the defining performances of the classic blues era.
Portrait: Carl Van Vechten (restored by Adam Cuerden) · Public domain (no known copyright restrictions) · via Wikimedia Commons