Bessie Smith "Empress Of The Blues"

Black History Maker: Bessie Smith “Empress Of The Blues”

The daughter of a preacher, Bessie Smith overcame Southern poverty to become the greatest and most influential classic blues singer of the 1920s, earning the honorific “Empress of the Blues.” Her turbulent life encompassed a tragic childhood, a flamboyant lifestyle and stormy marriage, and a fickle public that eventually turned its back on the blues in favor of swing. Despite all this, Bessie, an immensely talented but hard-drinking, lusty, and volatile woman, was almost single-handedly responsible for thrusting African-American-Southern blues into mainstream music.

Among the songs she made famous are “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Baby Doll,” “Gimme a Pigfoot,” and “Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness if I do.” Though the record industry was still in its early years, Bessie made over 160 recordings and, at the height of her popularity, she sold more recordings than anyone other than Caruso and Al Jolson. Over the decades, stars such as Ethel Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, and Janis Joplin have acknowledged their debt to Bessie’s groundbreaking work. In 1980, Bessie Smith was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame and, in 1989, into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.