{"id":7634,"date":"2023-09-27T17:45:58","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T22:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=7634"},"modified":"2023-09-27T17:45:58","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T22:45:58","slug":"how-the-empress-of-the-blues-became-a-commodity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2023\/09\/27\/how-the-empress-of-the-blues-became-a-commodity\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Empress of the Blues Became a Commodity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Smith, Bessie, Lovie Austin, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and Lovie Austin.\u00a0Chicago Bound Blues<\/cite>. 1923. Audio. https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/item\/jukebox-672304\/.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bessie Smith was born in 1894 or 1895 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.\u00a0 One of seven siblings in a poor household, Bessie came from the humblest of beginnings possible.\u00a0 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<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 Rainey mentored Smith, and eventually Smith was playing shows with herself as the star of the night.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Black voices and experiences became a commodity that could be sold to White and Black listeners alike.<\/p>\n

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Advertisement from The Chicago Defender, from “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show South from Afar” by Mark K. Dolan<\/p><\/div>\n

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<\/sup><\/a> (Dolan, 110).\u00a0 Songs, such as “Chicago Bound Blues” which references the Defender<\/em>, that referenced the Great Migration were greatly lucrative to record companies as Black singers lamenting over their experiences was highly profitable.<\/p>\n

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<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 “Race music”, however, presented a new opportunity for Black Artists to artistically express themselves.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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1<\/a> Boomer, Lee. n.d. \u201cLife Story: Bessie Smith (1894 or 1895\u20131937).\u201d Women & the American Story. Accessed September 27, 2023. https:\/\/wams.nyhistory.org\/confidence-and-crises\/jazz-age\/bessie-smith\/#resource.<\/p>\n

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2<\/a> Dolan, Mark K. \u201cExtra!\u00a0Chicago Defender<\/i>\u00a0Race Records Ads Show South from Afar.\u201d\u00a0Southern Cultures<\/i>\u00a013, no. 3 (2007): 106\u201324. https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/26391067.<\/p>\n

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3<\/a> Brackett, David. \u201cForward to the Past: Race Music in the 1920s.\u201d In\u00a0Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music<\/i>, 1st ed., 69\u2013112. University of California Press, 2016. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.1525\/j.ctt1c84fg2.9.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/em><\/p>\n

Boomer, Lee. n.d. \u201cLife Story: Bessie Smith (1894 or 1895\u20131937).\u201d Women & the American Story. Accessed September 27, 2023. https:\/\/wams.nyhistory.org\/confidence-and-crises\/jazz-age\/bessie-smith\/#resource.<\/p>\n

Dolan, Mark K. \u201cExtra!\u00a0Chicago Defender<\/i>\u00a0Race Records Ads Show South from Afar.\u201d\u00a0Southern Cultures<\/i>\u00a013, no. 3 (2007): 106\u201324. https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/26391067.<\/p>\n

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Brackett, David. \u201cForward to the Past: Race Music in the 1920s.\u201d In\u00a0Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music<\/i>, 1st ed., 69\u2013112. University of California Press, 2016. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.1525\/j.ctt1c84fg2.9.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Streaty, Donna. \u201cEMPRESS OF THE BLUES: BESSIE SMITH.\u201d\u00a0Negro History Bulletin<\/i>\u00a044, no. 1 (1981): 22\u201322. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/44176459.<\/p>\n

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Smith, Bessie, Lovie Austin, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and Lovie Austin.\u00a0Chicago Bound Blues<\/cite>. 1923. Audio. https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/item\/jukebox-672304\/.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bessie Smith was born in 1894 or 1895 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.\u00a0 One of seven siblings in a poor household, Bessie came from the humblest of beginnings possible.\u00a0 From a young age, Smith worked as a street performer, much to her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1397],"tags":[38,201,1098],"class_list":["post-7634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2023-mus-345-b","tag-12-bar-blues","tag-bessie-smith","tag-blues-queens"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-1Z8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7648,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7634\/revisions\/7648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}