{"id":7710,"date":"2023-09-28T23:09:59","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T04:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=7710"},"modified":"2023-09-28T23:09:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T04:09:59","slug":"bessie-smiths-chicago-bound-blues-the-chicago-defender-and-the-great-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2023\/09\/28\/bessie-smiths-chicago-bound-blues-the-chicago-defender-and-the-great-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"Bessie Smith\u2019s \u201cChicago Bound Blues,\u201d the Chicago Defender, and the Great Migration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although usually not properly credited, women have always made music, from nuns composing hymns to today\u2019s 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<\/sup><\/a><\/span> She was one of the most successful Black performing artists of her day,2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and her success marks the beginning of the genre of \u201crace records” marketed to the African-American audience by early recording companies. Six years previous to Bessie\u2019s first recording session, the <\/span>Chicago Defender <\/span><\/i>(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\u2019s music alone.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Portrait of Bessie Smith by Carl Van Vechten<\/p><\/div>\n

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 <\/span>Defender <\/span><\/i>advertised, including Smith\u2019s music. Smith was extremely critical of the Migration in her music, which makes the paper\u2019s fervent support for her a bit odd, since the <\/span>Defender<\/span><\/i>\u2019s founder actively promoted the Great Migration.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Mark K. Dolan argues that these ads for blues music about life \u201cdown home\u201d in the South is the paper\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s critical perspective can be seen in the song \u201cChicago Bound Blues\u201d 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:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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