Hello Readers!

Welcome to the second post about Blues artists. In this post I will be telling you about Bessie Smith and what she has contributed to the blues scene. Smith was born in Tennessee in 1894. Her father died shortly after her birth, followed by her mother and two brothers. Smith and the rest of her siblings were raised by her aunt. As previously mentioned, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey were in the same performance group, the Moses Stokes troupe. Ma Rainey became a mentor to Smith for a number of years.

She had a tough time in her career due to the Great Depression. The economy was in turmoil, and that means that people didn’t have money for leisure activities, such as going to see a performance. During this time she separated from her husband and quit working with her recording label, Columbia.(biography.com 2019) She loved performing, and she couldn’t just stop. She started touring again and was later picked up by another label. Her life was cut short at age 43 with a car accident.

Biography.com Editors, Bessie Smith Biography, A&E Television Networks, April 2019, https://www.biography.com/musician/bessie-smith

Now that we have a little background on Bessie Smith, let’s look at a couple of her songs that made her famous. The first one I came across was Downhearted blues. One thing I noticed was the song has a decent range. The tempo is moderate and fairly bright. Her voice is rather powerful and has timbre. It is a 12 bar blues song with the addition of a few stanzas at the beginning for flavor. The topic is about love and being mistreated and needing to be treated properly. She has a piano to sing along with. I would say Downhearted blues has a wave-like contour to it.

The next song I picked to discuss is St. Louis Blues. One thing I noticed right away is that this song is neither a 12 bar nor 8 bar blues song. The beginning is in a 12 bar blues organization, however it does not continue throughout the song. This song might be closer to a cross between ballad and blues. The range isn’t very wide, however it is in a higher register than an average range. There is a very strong timbre to her voice. This song also has a wave-like contour. I did notice in the lyrics that there is a lot of dialect that is present. Standard American English is not used in this song.

Alright everyone that is it for this post. Thank you for reading about two powerful women in the early Blues era in music history!