"The Empress of the Blues" gave voice the listeners' tribulations and yearnings of the 1920s and '30s. A new 10-CD box set collects the complete... The Mythic Power Of Bessie Smith Vocalist Bessie ...

Blues singer Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” is often connected to the well-known Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which devastated predominantly Black communities in Arkansas, Mississippi and ...

The pioneering singer influenced blues, jazz, rock and beyond with her powerful voice and inventive delivery, displaying a greatness rooted in the... This essay is one in a series celebrating women ...

The hangings parted and a great brown woman emerged—she was the size of Fay Templeton in her Weber & Fields days, and she was even garbed similarly, in a rose satin dress, spangled with sequins, which ...

Bessie Smith. side 1: Backwater Blues; side 2: Them "Has Been" Blues (Hot Jazz Club of America HC 105). 78rpm. Side 1 was originally recorded in 1927 and released on Columbia 14195-D. Side 2 was ...

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