Bessie Smith: Back-Water Blues

Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was the Empress of the Blues. She was the highest-paid black entertainer of her day and had her own railway carriage. This thread will tell you all about it, and the part Southern racism played in her decision that she and her troupe should travel that way.

Gwen Thompkins says of her on the NPR site:

She was big and brown and built high off the ground - "a hell of a woman," men called her, but most women said she was "rough." And while there were other blues singers in the first half of the 20th century = some who shared her surname - none could be mistaken for Bessie Smith. Not Mamie Smith or Clara or Trixie or Ruby or Laura.

None of the others could sing with her combination of field holler and Jazz Age sophistication. None could throw her voice from the stage - without a microphone - and make a balcony seat feel like the front row. None made such an artistic impression on her contemporaries in jazz, or her disciples in rock 'n' roll. That's because she was the "Empress of the Blues" - and empress is, by definition, a solo gig.

Back-Water Blues was Smith's own composition, inspired by floods that struck Nashville on Christmas Day 1926.

And the pianist here is the influential James P. Johnson, who had Fats Waller as his student.