Tag Archives: Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith’s “Chicago Bound Blues,” the Chicago Defender, and the Great Migration

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Although usually not properly credited, women have always made music, from nuns composing hymns to today’s pop icons. Blues music is no exception. Bessie Smith recorded the first ever commercial blues records in 1922, and her sales success set up that decade to be one where women dominated the genre.1 She was one of the most successful Black performing artists of her day,2 and her success marks the beginning of the genre of “race records” marketed to the African-American audience by early recording companies. Six years previous to Bessie’s first recording session, the Chicago Defender (a major Black newspaper) had begun a campaign for major record companies to record Black artists. Once the genre had taken off commercially, the paper began to feature ads for these records, including over a hundred ads for Bessie Smith’s music alone.3 

Portrait of Bessie Smith by Carl Van Vechten

The emergence of blues as a commercial music genre in the 1920s happened to coincide with the Great Migration, where thousands of Black Americans left the South to move to northern cities in search of jobs, motivated by the false promise that Northerners would be less racist. This became a predominant theme in the blues music the Defender advertised, including Smith’s music. Smith was extremely critical of the Migration in her music, which makes the paper’s fervent support for her a bit odd, since the Defender’s founder actively promoted the Great Migration.4 Mark K. Dolan argues that these ads for blues music about life “down home” in the South is the paper’s invitation for Black Americans in the North to participate in the cultural memory of the violence and pain that these songs express, and as the Migration revealed itself to be an empty promise, they became a source of shared nostalgia. 

Smith’s critical perspective can be seen in the song “Chicago Bound Blues” from 1923, recorded in the same year by Ida Cox. In this song he sings about her man leaving to find a job in Chicago, leaving her behind: 


“Mean old fireman, cruel engineer
Mean old fireman, cruel engineer
You took my man away and left his mama standing here.”5

In the final verse, she nails home the immense pain that the Great Migration has caused her by separating her from her man: “Red headline in tomorrow’s Defender news…’Woman dead down home with the Chicago Blues.’” Smith even directly references the Defender in her criticism of the Migration.6

Yet, the newspaper’s ads imposed an imagined, romanticized South as the setting for all of these songs, positing it as something far away and imagined, nostalgic and yearned for, and yet still a site that is predominantly characterized by the pain and tragic themes expressed in blues music.7

Eventually, the Defender realizes the potential for the romanticization of a “lonely wayfarer” character in the Delta blues performed by Black men, and the ads for male singers’ music soon overwhelm those for female performers. The political and sexual agency found in blueswomen’s music is silenced before it even has a chance to be properly heard.

1 McGuire, Phillip. “Black Music Critics and the Classic Blues Singers.” The Black Perspective in Music 14, no. 2 (1986): 103. https://doi.org/10.2307/1214982.

2 Meckna, Michael. “Smith, Bessie.” Grove Music Online, May 24, 2022. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-90000315175.

3 Dolan, Mark K. “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar.” Southern Cultures 13, no. 3 (2007): 107.

4 Dolan, 107.

5 Genius. “Chicago Bound Blues (Famous Migration Blues).” Accessed September 28, 2023. https://genius.com/Ida-cox-chicago-bound-blues-famous-migration-blues-lyrics.

6 Ibid.

7 Dolan, 110.

How the Empress of the Blues Became a Commodity

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Smith, Bessie, Lovie Austin, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and Lovie Austin. Chicago Bound Blues. 1923. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-672304/.

Bessie Smith was born in 1894 or 1895 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  One of seven siblings in a poor household, Bessie came from the humblest of beginnings possible.  From a young age, Smith worked as a street performer, much to her older sister’s chagrin, and in 1912, she began to play more public shows which resulted in her being noticed by blues legend Ma Rainey1.  Rainey mentored Smith, and eventually Smith was playing shows with herself as the star of the night.

In 1923, Smith was signed to Columbia Records during a time where “race music” or music by Black artists for Black singers was an incredibly an incredibly lucrative side of the music industry.  While “race music” artists were given a degree of creative freedom in the musical process, they were often underpaid as it was the record label executives that were making the real money.  Black voices and experiences became a commodity that could be sold to White and Black listeners alike.

Advertisement from The Chicago Defender, from “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar” by Mark K. Dolan

Many of these ads would co-opt Black vernacular and “spoke through minstrel stereotypes, in part echoing the tent-show venues where performers such as Rainey toiled for years and where Bessie Smith reportedly stood her ground against Ku Klux Klan riders…”2 (Dolan, 110).  Songs, such as “Chicago Bound Blues” which references the Defender, that referenced the Great Migration were greatly lucrative to record companies as Black singers lamenting over their experiences was highly profitable.

Black artists that wanted to see a small modicum of financial success by recording were stuck between a rock and a hard place in the recording industry, as before the 1920’s, the only sanctioned versions of expressing Black identity through music were minstrelsy or spirituals3.  “Race music”, however, presented a new opportunity for Black Artists to artistically express themselves.  Bessie Smith’s legendary career and impact on the blues can not be overstated, but it must not go unmentioned how she was still advertised via stereotypes and grossly underpaid.

1 Boomer, Lee. n.d. “Life Story: Bessie Smith (1894 or 1895–1937).” Women & the American Story. Accessed September 27, 2023. https://wams.nyhistory.org/confidence-and-crises/jazz-age/bessie-smith/#resource.

2 Dolan, Mark K. “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar.” Southern Cultures 13, no. 3 (2007): 106–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26391067.

3 Brackett, David. “Forward to the Past: Race Music in the 1920s.” In Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music, 1st ed., 69–112. University of California Press, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1c84fg2.9.

 

Works Cited

Boomer, Lee. n.d. “Life Story: Bessie Smith (1894 or 1895–1937).” Women & the American Story. Accessed September 27, 2023. https://wams.nyhistory.org/confidence-and-crises/jazz-age/bessie-smith/#resource.

Dolan, Mark K. “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar.” Southern Cultures 13, no. 3 (2007): 106–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26391067.

Brackett, David. “Forward to the Past: Race Music in the 1920s.” In Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music, 1st ed., 69–112. University of California Press, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1c84fg2.9.

Streaty, Donna. “EMPRESS OF THE BLUES: BESSIE SMITH.” Negro History Bulletin 44, no. 1 (1981): 22–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44176459.

Smith, Bessie, Lovie Austin, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and Lovie Austin. Chicago Bound Blues. 1923. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-672304/.

Feminist or Fraud: The Authenticity of Bessie Smith’s Music

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Though her rein took place during the 1920’s the “Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith, is still a household name.1 Blues queens, like Bessie Smith, had a huge impact on the music scene of the time but they also made considerable contributions to the cultural environment of the time. Their songs, often times characterized by their themes of love and loss, talked about the struggles of being a black woman and the consequences of the cross section between race, gender, and class. One example of this is Bessie Smith’s “A Good Man is Hard To Find” which talks about a cheating husband but also the difficulty of leaving a relationship due to outside forces.

The authenticity of the stories within blues queens’ music is something that has been continually questioned.2 The success of these women put them in the spotlight and made them someone to critique as well as a figure to look up to. This popularity is exhibited through the numerous radio spots, advertisements for sold out performances, and music endorsements, like the one below.3

“Chirpin’ the Blues” sheet music with endorsement by Bessie Smith

Though the music was the main event of a Blues queen’s career, if the authenticity of their music and the narrative surrounding them was questioned then they could lose support and ultimately those gigs would go away. This is not a singular issue, though, rather it is a societal issue rooted in sexism and racism. Bessie Smith is not exempt from this kind of critique.4 She was very rich and very famous, and sometimes its hard to think that a figure like that could experience things like cheating, addiction, or poverty. Bessie Smith was not exempt from critique but she was a much more complicated woman than met the eye. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Bessie Smith sings about a rather specific situation in which a man cheats on a woman and the woman wishes she could go back in time and fix the situation. Bessie Smith may, or may not have experienced this specific situation but she did experience love and loss, and could relate to the feelings exhibited in the song. Her parents passed away when she was very young and she supported herself by singing on street corners. She was married twice, the first marriage ending in the death of her husband and the second ending in a painful divorce.5 In Bessie Smith’s case, her music is a reflection of her experiences. There are a lot of scenarios in her songs that she may not have lived through but she experienced the kind of pain and loss that permeated many of them. Ultimately, bringing attention to these experiences and showing the resilience and ingenuity of women she should be lauded as a feminist and a positive role model.

1 Lordi, Emily J.. Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013.

2 Suisman, David. “Was Bessie Smith a feminist?.” Souls, vol. 1 iss. 1, 1999.

3 Austin, Lovie adn Alberta Hunter. “Chripin’ the Blues.” New York: Jack Mills, Inc, 1923.

4 Blackwell, Amy Hackney. “Ma Rainey.” In The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2018.

5 “Bessie Smith.” In The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2018.

Sherman H. Dudley’s Theater and Support of Theater Owners Bookers Association

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Whilst looking through the database of America’s Historical Newspapers, I stumbled across a 1919 advertisement for S. H. Dudley’s theater, a place where they showed photoplay and vaudeville acts. In the ad, they assert that they are “the only theatre on Seventh Street catering to people of color that does not DISCRIMINATE.” This piqued my interest.

The Sherman Houston Dudley theater was founded by its namesake, a man from Texas who had been a minstrel show performer and who had experience performing in the group “The Smart Set.” As Sherman saved money and became an entrepreneur, he slowly bought out a circuit of theaters and used them as safe spaces for black performers.

Sherman was one of the most popular black performers in the late 19th c, adding his skills as a musician with those of a comedian to his sets. Despite his popularity, he apparently never recorded.1

Image result for sherman dudleyEventually, Sherman Dudley’s circuit of theaters for African American performers, the “Consolidated Circuit,” merged into the Theater Owners Bookers Association (TOBA)2 as a way to help promote black artists and vaudeville performers in particular – famous blues singers like Bessie Smith had their start there.3 Dudley’s support of the theater and TOBA helped create a safe space for African American performers who often were still discriminated against despite their in-demand status. As an African American performer himself, he understood the struggles of his fellow black performers and wanted to help even out the playing field and give them fair and safe opportunities.

 


While Alexander Street Jazz Archives provide rather dismal results, I was able to find a recording uploaded to Youtube that supposedly was recorded by S.H.Dudley. There’s no way to really know if it was him, or if the uploader has any credibility. This is also a problem with materials that were recorded, particularly by African American performers – the exploitation and discrimination against them could have led to false advertising, incorrect records, marketing schemes, and deceptive contracts between performers and their companies. The Library of Congress site has many recordings by an S H Dudley, but here, his first name is Samuel – furthering the confusion. In an attempt to capitalize on Dudley’s talent, did someone else record this song under his name? Or intentionally use the first two initials to maintain ambiguity in the hopes that people would mistake this singer for Sherman Dudley? Did Sherman Dudley go by two different names? This could point to a further line of inquiry.

1 Tim Brooks. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry. Chicago: University of Illinois Press (2010) 520.

2 Tim Brooks. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry. Chicago: University of Illinois Press (2010) 520.

3 Thomas Riis and Howard Rye. “Theater Owners’ Booking Association.” The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed.. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed October 10, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/J445700.

Advertisement, “Dudley’s Amusements” in the Washington Bee (May 24 1919). America’s Historical Newspapers http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive/?p_product=EANX&p_theme=ahnp&p_nbid=J61W62EXMTUwNzU4NTA0OC41MTA1MDg6MToxNDoxMzAuNzEuMjQwLjI0Mg&p_action=doc&s_lastnonissuequeryname=5&d_viewref=search&p_queryname=5&p_docnum=3&p_docref=v2:12B2E340B2C9FFB8@EANX-12BA623D08261EE0@2422103-12B9B0B664446C80@4-12DCFE90E2C1B868@No%20Headline

From Blues to Jazz: Handy to Vaughan

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Jazz is a musical style native to the United States, that emerged in the early Twentieth century. Jazz was influenced from Blues music, which was established most notably by W.C. Handy in 1917. Jazz has new sound that incorporates both the African American musical stylings and the European American form of music. This hybridization of the two heritages created a unique style of music which we now call under a big genre “umbrella,” Jazz. In the Library of Congress photo archives, a photo of the reputable Sarah Vaughan was present among many photos of white jazz singers. She became popular in the late 40s and early 50s when Jazz was really hitting it’s stride as popular music, with the likes of Frank Sinatra.

sarah vaughn

Vaughan was highly influenced by the early blues style, of W.C. Handy. Handy’s invention or development of the Memphis Blues, drew on the folk style of the old southern plantation music. The emotional context of this music is heard in the vocal stylings of the renowned Sarah Vaughan. The memphis blues eventually took shape to the 12-bar blues, which also led to the development of Jazz.

While Vaughan represents a big part of the Jazz era, more commonly was the presence of white artists, such as Doris Day, Peggy Lee, and Sinatra. They emulated the sounds of a soulful Vaughan, singing on topics that go back to the days of slavery.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/7948/autoplay/true/

“St. Louis Blues” is a great example of an old dixieland jazz band song that evolved over the years. In the recording provided in the above link, the instrumentation, while has elements of a traditional jazz band also still has southern sounds to it… likely from New Orleans. In the video below, the song is presented in a different style of blues and jazz, one that emerged later with artists like Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughan.

 

Bibliography

Gottlieb, William, photographer. “Portrait of Sarah Vaughan in Café Society (Downtown).” Photograph. New York, N.Y.: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs. Aug. 1946. Online.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/7948/autoplay/true/