While watching a performance of Six Strings Down by Jimmie Vaughan it got me thinking and I was also reminded of an article I was reading on a web site I 'stumbled' upon about Sean Costello and I thought I would compose a series of posts for this blog about other blues artists whose lives were also tragically cut short.This is the forth in the series of these posts and our first 'non-guitar player', and please check back in with this blog regularly as I will be composing a further posts on this subject.
Bessie Smithb. Chattanooga, Tennessee: 15 April, circa 1894
d. 26 September, 1937
Known as the "Empress of the Blues", Bessie Smith boasted one of the greatest voices of the 20th century, and she the very first blues superstar.
The exact year of Bessie Smith's birth remains uncertain; 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898 and 1900, but 1894 seems most likely.
She was discovered by Ma Rainey and it is generally accepted that Rainey did not teach Smith to sing, but she probably helped her develop a stage presence.
By the 1920's Bessie Smith was a headline act in her own right and in 1923 Columbia released "Down hearted Blues" and "Gulf Coast Blues" which was the biggest seller of the year and made Bessie Smith a national star.
She was soon the highest paid black entertainer in America, earning two thousand dollars a week (a staggering sum for the time) but the rage for female blues singers was brief.
Bessie Smith had a catalogue of about 160 recordings but by 1930 male singers had taken over and her career was all but over.
Bessie Smith's last few years were spent playing seedy Harlem theaters and touring the South.
On September 26, 1937, Bessie Smith was severely injured in a car accident while traveling between Memphis, Tennessee and Clarksdale, Mississippi.
She was taken to Clarksdale's Afro-American Hospital where her right arm was amputated.
She did not regain consciousness, and died that morning.
