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Carl
Van Vechten (18801964)
Bessie Smith 1936
Courtesy of the Carl Van Vechten Collection,
Prints & Photographs Division, Library
of Congress
Bessie
Smith (c.18981937)
Wasted Life Blues 1929
78
rpm record
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
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Bessie
Smith
c.18981937
Bessie
Smith was perhaps the greatest and most influential
blues singer during the 1920s—the heyday of the
classic ‘blues’. Her renditions of songs about
life in the American South earned her the title
‘Empress of the Blues’. She performed mainly in
black theatres, but she did sing one evening in
the New York apartment of Carl Van Vechten, a
writer and amateur photographer who frequented
Harlem nightclubs, and took this portrait photograph
of her.
Smith’s
first record, Down-hearted Blues, was an
immediate success. It was issued in 1923, with
Gulf Coast Blues on the flip side. By 1930,
she had become the most respected African American
singer. During the decade that followed, she recorded
more than 160 songs, with her last sessions taking
place in November 1933. Although her voice and
her career went into a period of decline in the
1930s, her fortunes seemed to be changing in 19361937.
Tragically, she died from injuries sustained in
an automobile accident near Memphis, Tennessee,
in September 1937.
Bessie
Smith possessed an astonishing and innate musicality.
She was praised for her broad phrasing, clear
diction, blue-note inflections and emotional intensity.
Her catalogue of recordings remains widely regarded
as the standard against which all other female
blues singers are measured. She is best known
as a blues singer, but also recorded a number
of jazz and popular standards. She also wrote
or co-wrote at least 33 of the songs she recorded,
including Wasted Life Blues, dating from
1929 and recorded that year.
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