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The 1920s in America

Smith, Bessie

by Mitsutoshi Inaba

Identification: African American blues singer

Born: April 15, 1894, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Died: September 26, 1937, Clarksdale, Mississippi

Known as “Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith was one of the most popular and influential blues singers of the 1920s and the 1930s. Her followers included singers Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Janis Joplin.

Smith lost both of her parents as a child and was raised by her sister Viola. Her brother Clarence was influential in her early life, teaching her to sing and dance in order to make a living with street performances. Vocalist Cora Fisher also taught Smith to sing. In 1912, Clarence, who had joined the Moses Stokes Minstrel Show, arranged an audition for his sister. She started her career as a dancer and soon became a featured singer. Around this period, Smith became acquainted with noted blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, much of whose repertoire Smith later recorded. By the time Smith moved to Philadelphia in 1921, she was already a star among Southern African Americans. She played a headliner in the musical How Come? with pianist-composer Clarence Williams and famous saxophonist Sidney Bechet. She continued performing in theaters along the East Coast and auditioned for several record companies but was turned down because her voice was too powerful for the recording technologies of the time. In January 1923, however, Frank Walker, a Columbia Records producer, sent Williams to sign her for the label.

Recording Career

The day after an unsuccessful first recording session on February 15, 1923, Smith recorded the best-selling songs of her career: “Down Hearted Blues,” written by singer Alberta Hunter, and “Gulf Coast Blues,” by Williams. The record sold more than 780,000 copies in less than six months. Though she never matched this commercial success, she became the most popular female blues vocalist of the label. Initially nicknamed “Queen of the Blues,” Smith soon won the title “Empress of the Blues.” By 1933, she had recorded more than 160 sides for Columbia, with some alternate takes. Her classic recordings include “’Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” (1923), “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon” (1925), “Muddy Water: A Mississippi Moan” (1927), “Empty Bed Blues (Parts 1 and 2)” (1928), “Me and My Gin” (1928), “I’m Wild About That Thing” (1929), “Kitchen Man” (1929), and “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” (1931). While most of her materials were prepared by professional composers, she occasionally recorded her own compositions, such as “Back Water Blues” (1927) and “Poor Man’s Blues” (1928). In 1929, she appeared in the short film St. Louis Blues, based on W. C. Handy’s composition of the same name. In the same year, she recorded “Nobody Knows You When You Are Down and Out,” a song that predicted the Great Depression years that would bring her career to an end. By the beginning of the 1930s, the classic blues had become less popular. In 1931, Columbia did not renew its recording contract with Smith, though she continued public performances. In 1933, producer John Hammond helped Smith make a comeback by organizing an all-star session with clarinetist Benny Goodman and others. As heard in one of the cuts from this session, “Gimmie a Pigfoot,” her powerful vocal performance and lively expressions of the lyrics were still impeccable, but this was her last recording. On September 26, 1937, she was killed in a car accident while traveling near Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Impact

Bessie Smith’s music contributed greatly to the legacy of 1920s and 1930s American popular culture. Thanks to the electrical recording system that Western Electric licensed to Columbia Records in 1925, most of Smith’s recordings have good fidelity and vividly capture her wide vocal range and expressiveness, impeccable sense of timing and phrasing, and clear intonation and diction, all of which influenced subsequent female singers Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Janis Joplin. Smith recorded with many top musicians of the time, such as pianists Fletcher Henderson, Irving Johns, and James P. Johnson; cornetist Louis Armstrong; saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman; and clarinetists Buster Bailey and Benny Goodman.

During the peak of her popularity in the 1920s, Smith earned more than two thousand dollars each week. She hired her own train coach when touring, bailed friends out of jail, and bought luxury items such as a 1926 Cadillac convertible automobile as a gift for her fiancé, Jack Gee.

Smith was intolerant of racial prejudice and stood up against Ku Klux Klan members harassing her show in Concord, North Carolina, in July 1927. While she had some trusted white friends, such as producer Frank Walker and photographer Carl Van Vechten, she never tried to win the approval of white society. She was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973, Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008. She is also remembered in the Bessie Smith Cultural Center in her hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Further Reading

1 

Albertson, Chris. Bessie. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. A biography of Smith discussing her bisexuality and musical career.

2 

Brooks, Edward. The Bessie Smith Companion: A Critical and Detailed Appreciation of the Recordings. New York: Da Capo Press, 1982. Presents insights into Smith’s recordings throughout her career.

3 

Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. Explores the social, political, and sexual influence women blues singers had on their contemporary society.

4 

Grimes, Sara. Backwaterblues: In Search of Bessie Smith. Amherst, Mass.: Rose Island, 2000. Offers information about Smith’s life and most famous recordings in the context of 1920s and 1930s American society.

5 

Harris, Michael A. The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Includes information about Smith’s early recordings and influence on the gospel blues genre.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Inaba, Mitsutoshi. "Smith, Bessie." The 1920s in America, edited by Carl Rollyson, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1920_0573.
APA 7th
Inaba, M. (2012). Smith, Bessie. In C. Rollyson (Ed.), The 1920s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Inaba, Mitsutoshi. "Smith, Bessie." Edited by Carl Rollyson. The 1920s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.