The life and death of Bessie Smith, 70 years later

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Seventy years ago this week, the legendary blues singer Bessie Smith died under questionable circumstances. She was a uniquely talented, defiantly independent artist, whose life story was as sensational as her death.

Bessie Smith, along with a handful of other black female artists (including Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters), sprouted the roots of blues and grew it into one of the most popular musical forms of the 1920s and 1930s.

Smith’s keen sense of style, rhythm and intonation, along with the resonance and power of her voice, captured the essence of blues music, as well as the pain and strength of generations of black female experience.

Her career began in the early 1900s on the streets of Chattanooga, Tenn., where she and her older brother Clarence performed as a duo. In 1912, she was hired as a dancer for a small performance troupe that featured “The Mother of the Blues,” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. For the next several years, Smith toured in the South and Northeast, while developing her theatrical skills and stage presence under Rainey’s wing.

Bessie Smith was a big woman, who was known for her temper, her hard drinking, her sexual appetite—which included relationships with lovers of both sexes—and her willingness to fight for what she wanted, sometimes to the point of using physical force. But when she sang, Bessie Smith mesmerized her audience.

Smith’s popularity soared after she was signed to a recording contract by Columbia as part of its newly found interest in producing what were then called “race records.” The popularity of “Down Hearted Blues,” “Gulf Coast Blues” and other early Smith recordings led to her becoming a headliner with the Theater Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., in the early 1920s.

Among many blacks, T.O.B.A. stood for Tough On Black Artists because of the virulent and violent racism that performers on the circuit faced. Segregation was a daily reality, and black traveling artists were often met with flying rocks, bottles and rotting fruit.

Even at the height of Bessie Smith’s career as a performer and recording artist, she continued to endure racism. Perhaps that’s why it is so difficult to separate myth from reality where Smith’s death is concerned.

Bessie Smith, “The Empress of the Blues,” died 70 years ago, on Sept. 26, 1937, from injuries sustained in a car accident while traveling near Clarksdale, Miss. But the specifics of her death remain unclear.

A Down Beat magazine article, written by Smith’s producer, John Hammond, soon after her death, reported that Smith was denied admission to a local white hospital because she was black. According to Hammond’s article, Smith subsequently bled to death because of the denial of treatment. Hammond’s story—which he later admitted was based completely on hearsay—was widely circulated. More than 20 years later in 1960, Edward Albee produced the play “The Death of Bessie Smith,” which reinforced the Hammond version of events.

Some have argued that Hammond scapegoated Southern whites and sensationalized the story of Bessie Smith’s death to boost her post-mortem record sales. They point out, for example, that a white doctor stopped at the scene of the accident and attempted to treat Smith. Nevertheless, racism still appears to have played a part in her death, since it did take over seven hours for Smith to get to a hospital of any kind, by which time she was beyond saving. She was barely 43 years old.

I’ve admired Bessie Smith since I first heard her voice, saw her photo and read about her life. She was a strong and talented black woman who bowed to no one, and who lived her life the way she wanted. She wasn’t bound by social conventions, and she left a tremendous legacy of musical expression that touches the core of black American femaleness.

The circumstances of her death may remain in question, but there’s no doubt that Bessie Smith’s musical genius lives on.

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ABOUT THE WRITER
Andrea Lewis is a Stanford University Knight Journalism Fellow for 2007-2008. The writer wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.