Seventh Anotation

freedom, for us. "Freedom a History Of Us." 2008. Freedom a History Of Us. 21 Nov 2008 .



Bessie Smith began her career at the age of nine singing in the streets of Chattanooga, Tennessee. She joined a traveling vaudeville show as a dancer, but her real talent was singing.

By the 1920s, Smith had become the most popular blues singer in the country. Her fans called her the "Empress of the Blues." Smith made her first recording in 1923, "Down-Hearted Blues," which sold 750,000 copies. She made lots of money, but she spent it as fast as she made it.

When the Depression, radio, and talking movies stole the audience away from recorded music, Smith's career went downhill. She started a successful comeback as a Swing singer. In 1937, she died in a car accident.

Sixth Anotations

Whitney , Ross. "Reflections Of 1920's And 30's Street Life In The Music Of Bessie Smith." http:bluesnet.hub.org. 1995. the History of Women in Music.. 21 Nov 2008


As the saying goes, "you gotta pay the dues if you wanna sing the blues." In no other way than living the kind of violent, promiscuous, hard-drinking street life she sang about, could Bessie Smith have inspired in her audiences the powerful empathy that ultimately won her the title, "Empress of the Blues." Throughout her career, Bessie was respected for being a strong, independent African-American woman with tremendous talent and determination. She expressed great pride in her culture, and gladly participated in its earthy pleasures, regularly indulging her taste for alcohol and sex to extremes. Though her acclaim rapidly crossed racial boundaries, she shunned the icy affections and condescending embraces of the elitist white New York uppercrust, as well as fawning conformists from her own community. How ever much others tried to run roughshod over her, Bessie refused to submit to the slightest abuse without a knock-down, drag-out fight. With few exceptions, she held to her musical ideals with equal tenacity. Though musically illiterate, she regularly collaborated with her pianists to compose and write down her music,1 and her words frequently touched on pertinent events in her life. Her performance style, too, derives considerably from her own personal and cultural attributes.