39 Facts About Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age.

Bessie Smith began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own.

Bessie Smith's successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 43.

The 1900 census indicates that her family reported that Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892.

Bessie Smith was the daughter of Laura and William Bessie Smith, a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher.

Bessie Smith died while his daughter was too young to remember him.

Bessie Smith sang and danced as he played the guitar.

Bessie Smith was hired as a dancer rather than a vocalist since the company already included popular singer Ma Rainey.

Contemporary accounts indicate that, while Ma Rainey did not teach Bessie Smith to sing, she likely helped her develop a stage presence.

Bessie Smith eventually moved on to performing in chorus lines, making the "81" Theatre in Atlanta her home base.

Bessie Smith began forming her own act around 1913, at Atlanta's "81" Theater.

At the time, sales of over 100,000 copies of "Crazy Blues", recorded for Okeh Records by the singer Mamie Bessie Smith, pointed to a new market.

Bessie Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923 by Frank Walker, a talent agent who had seen her perform years earlier.

Bessie Smith's first recording session for Columbia was on February 15,1923; it was engineered by Dan Hornsby who was recording and discovering many southern music talents of that era.

Bessie Smith had a strong contralto voice, which recorded well from her first session, which was conducted when recordings were made acoustically.

Bessie Smith benefited from the new technology of radio broadcasting, even on stations in the segregated South.

Bessie Smith made 160 recordings for Columbia, often accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, notably Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P Johnson, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green.

Bessie Smith's career was cut short by the Great Depression, which nearly put the recording industry out of business, and the advent of sound in film, which spelled the end of vaudeville.

The days of elaborate vaudeville shows were over, but Bessie Smith continued touring and occasionally sang in clubs.

In November 1929, Smith made her only film appearance, starring in a two-reeler, St Louis Blues, based on composer W C Handy's song of the same name.

Bessie Smith was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each selection on these Okeh sides, which were her last recordings.

Hammond was not entirely pleased with the results, preferring to have Bessie Smith revisit her old blues sound.

On September 26,1937, Bessie Smith was critically injured in a car crash on US Route 61 between Memphis, Tennessee, and Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Bessie Smith, who was in the passenger seat, probably with her right arm or elbow out the window, took the full brunt of the impact.

Bessie Smith estimated she had lost about a half pint of blood, and immediately noted a major traumatic injury: her right arm was almost completely severed at the elbow.

Bessie Smith stated that this injury alone did not cause her death.

Bessie Smith attributed her death to extensive and severe crush injuries to the entire right side of her body, consistent with a sideswipe collision.

Dr Bessie Smith dressed her arm injury with a clean handkerchief and asked Broughton to go to a house about 500 feet off the road to call an ambulance.

Time passed with no sign of the ambulance, so Hugh Bessie Smith suggested that they take her into Clarksdale in his car.

Bessie Smith flashed his lights in warning, but the oncoming car failed to slow and plowed into his car at full speed.

Bessie Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia a little over a week later, on October 4,1937.

Bessie Smith's grave remained unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7,1970, paid for by the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith.

In 1923, Bessie Smith was living in Philadelphia when she met Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7,1923, just as her first record was being released.

In 1929, when she learned of his affair with another singer, Gertrude Saunders, Bessie Smith ended the relationship, although neither of them sought a divorce.

Bessie Smith later entered a common-law marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle.

Three recordings by Bessie Smith were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance".

In 2002, Bessie Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues" was included in the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

In 1984, Bessie Smith was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Bessie Smith was the subject of a 1997 biography by Jackie Kay, reissued in February 2021 and featuring as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, read in an abridged version by the author.