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| bessie smith impact on society: Blues Legacies and Black Feminism Angela Y. Davis, 2011-10-05 From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith−published here in their entirety for the first time−Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a conciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Black Diamond Queens Maureen Mahon, 2020-10-09 African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll—from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise. In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s. Mahon details the musical contributions and cultural impact of Big Mama Thornton, LaVern Baker, Betty Davis, Tina Turner, Merry Clayton, Labelle, the Shirelles, and others, demonstrating how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected their careers. By uncovering this hidden history of black women in rock and roll, Mahon reveals a powerful sonic legacy that continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Black Pearls Daphne Duval Harrison, 1988 Some singers included in this book are Sippie Wallace, Victoria Spivey, Edith Wilson, and Alberta Hunter. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Treat It Gentle Sidney Bechet, 2013-04 The most valuable and moving of all jazz biographies. -Nat Hentoff |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Sandbox ; And, The Death of Bessie Smith ; With, Fam and Yam Edward Albee, 1988 Two modern plays explore the spiritual and tragic aspects of the human struggle with death |
| bessie smith impact on society: Words and Songs of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone Melanie E. Bratcher, 2007-11-21 This book explores the relationship between three African American women's dance-art-music sensibilities within the context of a Pan African aesthetic. Its purpose is three-fold: to show commonalities between Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone's lives and original compositions; to codify, examine and evaluate their selected song performances in accordance with the Pan African aesthetic Nzuri theory/model; and to illuminate the vast sources of transformational values that aesthetic analysis of African American song performance can foster. Following concordant procedures and principles of Afrocentricity, the study focuses on Smith, Holiday and Simone's performances as part of a whole African artistic and cultural value system. The goal of the Afrocentric methodological structure is to locate relevant African dynamics in songs and to promote knowledge for cultural transformation and continuity. Its use in this study provides meta-criteria for analyzing African American music, which the author has used to uniquely argue connections between African cultural memory and African-derived cultural expression. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Blues: A Very Short Introduction Elijah Wald, 2010-08-03 Praised as suave, soulful, ebullient (Tom Waits) and a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed contrarian (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular music critics of his generation. In The Blues, Wald surveys a genre at the heart of American culture. It is not an easy thing to pin down. As Howlin' Wolf once described it, When you ain't got no money and can't pay your house rent and can't buy you no food, you've damn sure got the blues. It has been defined by lyrical structure, or as a progression of chords, or as a set of practices reflecting West African tonal and rhythmic approaches, using a five-note blues scale. Wald sees blues less as a style than as a broad musical tradition within a constantly evolving pop culture. He traces its roots in work and praise songs, and shows how it was transformed by such professional performers as W. C. Handy, who first popularized the blues a century ago. He follows its evolution from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith through Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix; identifies the impact of rural field recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton and others; explores the role of blues in the development of both country music and jazz; and looks at the popular rhythm and blues trends of the 1940s and 1950s, from the uptown West Coast style of T-Bone Walker to the down home Chicago sound of Muddy Waters. Wald brings the story up to the present, touching on the effects of blues on American poetry, and its connection to modern styles such as rap. As with all of Oxford's Very Short Introductions, The Blues tells you--with insight, clarity, and wit--everything you need to know to understand this quintessentially American musical genre. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Preaching on Wax Lerone A Martin, 2014-11-14 The overlooked African American religious history of the phonograph industry Winner of the 2015 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize for outstanding scholarship in church history by a first-time author presented by the American Society of Church History Certificate of Merit, 2015 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research presented by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections From 1925 to 1941, approximately one hundred African American clergymen teamed up with leading record labels such as Columbia, Paramount, Victor-RCA to record and sell their sermons on wax. While white clerics of the era, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Charles Fuller, became religious entrepreneurs and celebrities through their pioneering use of radio, black clergy were largely marginalized from radio. Instead, they relied on other means to get their message out, teaming up with corporate titans of the phonograph industry to package and distribute their old-time gospel messages across the country. Their nationally marketed folk sermons received an enthusiastic welcome by consumers, at times even outselling top billing jazz and blues artists such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. These phonograph preachers significantly shaped the development of black religion during the interwar period, playing a crucial role in establishing the contemporary religious practices of commodification, broadcasting, and celebrity. Yet, the fame and reach of these nationwide media ministries came at a price, as phonograph preachers became subject to the principles of corporate America. In Preaching on Wax, Lerone A. Martin offers the first full-length account of the oft-overlooked religious history of the phonograph industry. He explains why a critical mass of African American ministers teamed up with the major phonograph labels of the day, how and why black consumers eagerly purchased their religious records, and how this phonograph religion significantly contributed to the shaping of modern African American Christianity. Instructor's Guide |
| bessie smith impact on society: Josephine Baker Alan Schroeder, Heather Lehr Wagner, 2009 * Critically acclaimed biographies of history's most notable African-Americans * Straightforward and objective writing * Lavishly illustrated with photographs and memorabilia * Essential for multicultural studies |
| bessie smith impact on society: Fictional Blues Kimberly Mack, 2020 The familiar story of Delta blues musician Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads in exchange for guitar virtuosity, and the violent stereotypes evoked by legendary blues bad men like Stagger Lee undergird the persistent racial myths surrounding authentic blues expression. Fictional Blues unpacks the figure of the American blues performer, moving from early singers such as Ma Rainey and Big Mama Thornton to contemporary musicians such as Amy Winehouse, Rhiannon Giddens, and Jack White to reveal that blues makers have long used their songs, performances, interviews, and writings to invent personas that resist racial, social, economic, and gendered oppression. Using examples of fictional and real-life blues artists culled from popular music and literary works from writers such as Walter Mosley, Alice Walker, and Sherman Alexie, Kimberly Mack demonstrates that the stories blues musicians construct about their lives (however factually slippery) are inextricably linked to the primary story of the narrative blues tradition, in which autobiography fuels musicians' reclamation of power and agency. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Bessie Smith , 1975 |
| bessie smith impact on society: Cafe Society Barney Josephson, Terry Trilling-Josephson, 2009-03-12 The story of the night club impresario whose wildly successful interracial club, Cafe Society, changed the American artistic landscape forever |
| bessie smith impact on society: Mother of the Blues Sandra R. Lieb, 1981 Briefly portrays the life of the influential blues singer, Ma Rainey, discusses the development of her music, and analyzes the theme of love in her music. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Staging the Blues Paige A. McGinley, 2014-09-10 Singing was just one element of blues performance in the early twentieth century. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and other classic blues singers also tapped, joked, and flaunted extravagant costumes on tent show and black vaudeville stages. The press even described these women as actresses long before they achieved worldwide fame for their musical recordings. In Staging the Blues, Paige A. McGinley shows that even though folklorists, record producers, and festival promoters set the theatricality of early blues aside in favor of notions of authenticity, it remained creatively vibrant throughout the twentieth century. Highlighting performances by Rainey, Smith, Lead Belly, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee in small Mississippi towns, Harlem theaters, and the industrial British North, this pioneering study foregrounds virtuoso blues artists who used the conventions of the theater, including dance, comedy, and costume, to stage black mobility, to challenge narratives of racial authenticity, and to fight for racial and economic justice. |
| bessie smith impact on society: African Americans and Popular Culture Todd Boyd, 2008-10-30 The African American influence on popular culture is among the most sweeping and lasting this country has seen. Despite a history of institutionalized racism, black artists, entertainers, and entrepreneurs have had enormous impact on American popular culture. Pioneers such as Oscar Michaeux, Paul Robeson, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Langston Hughes, Bill Bojangles Robinson, and Bessie Smith paved the way for Jackie Robinson, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Sidney Poitier, and Bill Cosby, who in turn opened the door for Spike Lee, Dave Chappelle, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. Today, hip hop is the most powerful element of youth culture; white teenagers outnumber blacks as purchasers of rap music; black-themed movies are regularly successful at the box office, and black writers have been anthologized and canonized right alongside white ones. Though there are still many more miles to travel and much to overcome, this three-volume set considers the multifaceted influence of African Americans on popular culture, and sheds new light on the ways in which African American culture has come to be a fundamental and lasting part of America itself. To articulate the momentous impact African American popular culture has had upon the fabric of American society, these three volumes provide analyses from academics and experts across the country. They provide the most reliable, accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive treatment of key topics, works, and themes in African American popular culture for a new generation of readers. The scope of the project is vast, including: popular historical movements like the Harlem Renaissance; the legacy of African American comedy; African Americans and the Olympics; African Americans and rock 'n roll; more contemporary articulations such as hip hop culture and black urban cinema; and much more. One goal of the project is to recuperate histories that have been perhaps forgotten or obscured to mainstream audiences and to demonstrate how African Americans are not only integral to American culture, but how they have always been purveyors of popular culture. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Music Division Library of Congress, 1972 |
| bessie smith impact on society: Cross the Water Blues Neil A. Wynn, 2010-02-09 Contributions from Christopher G. Bakriges, Sean Creighton, Jeffrey Green, Leighton Grist, Bob Groom, Rainer E. Lotz, Paul Oliver, Catherine Parsonage, Iris Schmeisser, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Robert Springer, Rupert Till, Guido van Rijn, David Webster, Jen Wilson, and Neil A. Wynn This unique collection of essays examines the flow of African American music and musicians across the Atlantic to Europe from the time of slavery to the twentieth century. In a sweeping examination of different musical forms--spirituals, blues, jazz, skiffle, and orchestral music--the contributors consider the reception and influence of black music on a number of different European audiences, particularly in Britain, but also France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The essayists approach the subject through diverse historical, musicological, and philosophical perspectives. A number of essays document little-known performances and recordings of African American musicians in Europe. Several pieces, including one by Paul Oliver, focus on the appeal of the blues to British listeners. At the same time, these considerations often reveal the ambiguous nature of European responses to black music and in so doing add to our knowledge of transatlantic race relations. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Billie Holiday John Szwed, 2015-03-31 • Kirkus Best Books of 2015 selection for Biography • Published in celebration of Holiday’s centenary, the first biography to focus on the singer’s extraordinary musical talent When Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia’s studios in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and influential career in twentieth-century popular music. Her voice weathered countless shifts in public taste, and new reincarnations of her continue to arrive, most recently in the form of singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele. Most of the writing on Holiday has focused on the tragic details of her life—her prostitution at the age of fourteen, her heroin addiction and alcoholism, her series of abusive relationships—or tried to correct the many fabrications of her autobiography. But now, Billie Holiday stays close to the music, to her performance style, and to the self she created and put into print, on record and on stage. Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade, critically acclaimed jazz writer John Szwed considers how her life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Race Music Guthrie P. Ramsey, 2004-11-22 Covering the vast and various terrain of African American music, this text begins with an account of the author's own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago. It goes on to explore the global influence and social relevance of African American music. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Meaning of Soul Emily J. Lordi, 2020-07-24 In The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices—inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role played by black women in this musical-intellectual tradition. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Blues People Leroi Jones, 1999-01-20 The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music. So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls negro music on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow Marilyn Chin, 2003-06-24 A fusion of east and west, high culture, popular culture, and ancient Chinese history mark this distinguished collection. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Jazz Cadence of American Culture Robert G. O'Meally, 1998 Taking to heart Ralph Ellison's remark that much in American life is jazz-shaped, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture offers a wide range of eloquent statements about the influence of this art form. Robert G. O'Meally has gathered a comprehensive collection of important essays, speeches, and interviews on the impact of jazz on other arts, on politics, and on the rhythm of everyday life. Focusing mainly on American artistic expression from 1920 to 1970, O'Meally confronts a long era of political and artistic turbulence and change in which American art forms influenced one another in unexpected ways. Organized thematically, these provocative pieces include an essay considering poet and novelist James Weldon Johnson as a cultural critic, an interview with Wynton Marsalis, a speech on the heroic image in jazz, and a newspaper review of a recent melding of jazz music and dance, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. From Stanley Crouch to August Wilson to Jacqui Malone, the plurality of voices gathered here reflects the variety of expression within jazz. The book's opening section sketches the overall place of jazz in America. Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner unpack the word jazz and its register, Albert Murray considers improvisation in music and life, Amiri Baraka argues that white critics misunderstand jazz, and Stanley Crouch cogently dissects the intersections of jazz and mainstream American democratic institutions. After this, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring jazz and the visual arts, dance, sports, history, memory, and literature. Ann Douglas writes on jazz's influence on the design and construction of skyscrapers in the 1920s and '30s, Zora Neale Hurston considers the significance of African-American dance, Michael Eric Dyson looks at the jazz of Michael Jordan's basketball game, and Hazel Carby takes on the sexual politics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith's blues. The Jazz Cadence offers a wealth of insight and information for scholars, students, jazz aficionados, and any reader wishing to know more about this music form that has put its stamp on American culture more profoundly than any other in the twentieth century. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Listen To The Blues Bruce Cook, 1995-08-21 Listen to the Blues is an engrossing account into the making of America's fundamental music and the men and women who created it on riverboats, in whorehouses, at country dances, and in medicine shows. With guitars and the melancholic power of their voices these musicians developed a unique form of music that contributed to jazz and served as the roots of rock. Bruce Cook writes vividly about the music, explaining its origins and evolution, the conflicts among blues scholars, the hardship and danger that marked the lives of professional bluesmen. Based on original interviews, Listen to the Blues is filled with profiles of people like Leadbelly, Mance Lipscomb, Skip James, Bessie Smith, Big Bill Broonzy, Son House, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King. With new photos and a new discography, this book is an astute, outstanding introduction to the impact and spirit of the blues. |
| bessie smith impact on society: When and Where I Enter Paula J. Giddings, 2009-01-29 A history of the African American woman’s experience in America and an analysis of the relationship between sexism and racism. When and Where I Enter is an eloquent testimonial to the profound influences of African American women on race and women’s movements throughout American history. Drawing on speeches, diaries, letters, and other original documents, Paula Giddings powerfully portrays how black women have transcended racist and sexist attitudes—often confronting white feminists and black male leaders alike—to initiate social and political reform. From the open disregard for the rights of slave women to examples of today’s more covert racism and sexism in civil rights and women’s organizations, Giddings illuminates the black woman’s crusade for equality in the process, she paints unforgettable portraits of black female leaders, such as antilynching activist Ida B. Wells, educator and FDR adviser Mary McCleod Bethune, and the heroic civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, among others, who fought both overt and institutionalized oppression. Praise for When and Where I Enter “History at its best—clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject.” —Toni Morrison “A powerful book. Paula Giddings has shone a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history.” —Maya Angelou “A jarringly fresh interpretation . . . a labor of commitment and love.” —New York Times Book Review |
| bessie smith impact on society: Slave Songs of the United States William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison, 1996 Originally published in 1867, this book is a collection of songs of African-American slaves. A few of the songs were written after the emancipation, but all were inspired by slavery. The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves could, of crushed hopes, keen sorrow, and a dull, daily misery, which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice swamps. On the other hand, the words breathe a trusting faith in the life after, to which their eyes seem constantly turned. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Young Louis Armstrong on Records Edward Brooks, 2002 Comprehensive chronological survey and analysis of every recording on which Louis Armstrong played during the period 1923 to 1928. Armstrong's immense impact on the evolution of jazz is found primarily in these early recordings, and Brooks's close examination of this period is important, as much of this influence becomes obscured by later recordings. Glossary, bibliography, and title index. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction David Hajdu, 2020-09-22 This never-before-told story of the life and work of a (fictitious) musical phenomenon is a revealing?and at times hilarious?satire of the music business, fame, and the cult of personality (Clea Simon, Boston Globe). Adrianne Geffel was a genius. Praised as the “Geyser of Grand Street” and the “Queen of Bleak Chic,” she was a one-of-a-kind artist, a pianist and composer with a rare neurological condition that enabled her to make music that was nothing less than pure, unmediated emotional expression. She and her sensibility are now fully integrated into the cultural lexicon; her music has been portrayed, represented, and appropriated endlessly in popular culture. But what do we really know about her? Despite her renown, Adrianne Geffel vanished from public life, and her whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. David Hajdu cuts through the noise to tell, for the first time, the full story of Geffel’s life and work, piecing it together through the memories of those who knew her, inspired her, and exploited her—her parents, teachers, best friend, manager, critics, and lovers. Adrianne Geffel made music so strange, so compelling, so utterly unique that it is simply not to be believed. Hajdu has us believing every note of it in this slyly entertaining work of fiction. A brilliantly funny satire, with characters that leap off the page, Adrianne Geffel is a vividly twisted evocation of the New York City avant-garde of the 1970s and ’80s, and a strangely moving portrait of a world both utterly familiar and like none we’ve ever encountered. |
| bessie smith impact on society: "Who Set You Flowin'?" Farah Jasmine Griffin, 1996-09-26 Twentieth-century America has witnessed the most widespread and sustained movement of African-Americans from the South to urban centers in the North. Who Set You Flowin'? examines the impact of this dislocation and urbanization, identifying the resulting Migration Narratives as a major genre in African-American cultural production. Griffin takes an interdisciplinary approach with readings of several literary texts, migrant correspondence, painting, photography, rap music, blues, and rhythm and blues. From these various sources Griffin isolates the tropes of Ancestor, Stranger, and Safe Space, which, though common to all Migration Narratives, vary in their portrayal. She argues that the emergence of a dominant portrayal of these tropes is the product of the historical and political moment, often challenged by alternative portrayals in other texts or artistic forms, as well as intra-textually. Richard Wright's bleak, yet cosmopolitan portraits were countered by Dorothy West's longing for Black Southern communities. Ralph Ellison, while continuing Wright's vision, reexamined the significance of Black Southern culture. Griffin concludes with Toni Morrison embracing the South as a site of African-American history and culture, a place to be redeemed. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Musicking Christopher Small, 2012-01-01 Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms musicking, a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower. Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Talented Tenth W E B Du Bois, 2020-10-13 Taken from The Talented Tenth written by W. E. B. Du Bois: The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools-intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it-this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Original Blues Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff, 2017-02-27 Blues Book of the Year —Living Blues Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Gospel, Soul, or R&B–Certificate of Merit (2018) 2023 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee - Classic of Blues Literature category With this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music. Fortified by decades of research, the authors bring to life the performers, entrepreneurs, critics, venues, and institutions that were most crucial to the emergence of the blues in black southern vaudeville theaters; the shadowy prehistory and early development of the blues is illuminated, detailed, and given substance. At the end of the nineteenth century, vaudeville began to replace minstrelsy as America’s favorite form of stage entertainment. Segregation necessitated the creation of discrete African American vaudeville theaters. When these venues first gained popularity, ragtime coon songs were the standard fare. Insular black southern theaters provided a safe haven, where coon songs underwent rehabilitation and blues songs suitable for the professional stage were formulated. The process was energized by dynamic interaction between the performers and their racially-exclusive audience. The first blues star of black vaudeville was Butler “String Beans” May, a blackface comedian from Montgomery, Alabama. Before his bizarre, senseless death in 1917, String Beans was recognized as the “blues master piano player of the world.” His musical legacy, elusive and previously unacknowledged, is preserved in the repertoire of country blues singer-guitarists and pianists of the race recording era. While male blues singers remained tethered to the role of blackface comedian, female “coon shouters” acquired a more dignified aura in the emergent persona of the “blues queen.” Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and most of their contemporaries came through this portal; while others, such as forgotten blues heroine Ora Criswell and her protégé Trixie Smith, ingeniously reconfigured the blackface mask for their own subversive purposes. In 1921 black vaudeville activity was effectively nationalized by the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.). In collaboration with the emergent race record industry, T.O.B.A. theaters featured touring companies headed by blues queens with records to sell. By this time the blues had moved beyond the confines of entertainment for an exclusively black audience. Small-time black vaudeville became something it had never been before—a gateway to big-time white vaudeville circuits, burlesque wheels, and fancy metropolitan cabarets. While the 1920s was the most glamorous and remunerative period of vaudeville blues, the prior decade was arguably even more creative, having witnessed the emergence, popularization, and early development of the original blues on the African American vaudeville stage. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Devil's Music Giles Oakley, 1978 Anecdotes, reminiscences, first-hand reports, and appreciative commentary combine to provide a celebratory account of the blues' development from turn-of-the-century New Orleans honky-tonk and Mississippi Delta barrelhouse to today's urban blues. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Vernacular Insurrections Carmen Kynard, 2013-04-02 Winner of the 2015 James M. Britton Award presented by Conference on English Education a constituent organization within the National Council of Teachers of English Carmen Kynard locates literacy in the twenty-first century at the onset of new thematic and disciplinary imperatives brought into effect by Black Freedom Movements. Kynard argues that we must begin to see how a series of vernacular insurrections—protests and new ideologies developed in relation to the work of Black Freedom Movements—have shaped our imaginations, practices, and research of how literacy works in our lives and schools. Utilizing many styles and registers, the book borrows from educational history, critical race theory, first-year writing studies, Africana studies, African American cultural theory, cultural materialism, narrative inquiry, and basic writing scholarship. Connections between social justice, language rights, and new literacies are uncovered from the vantage point of a multiracial, multiethnic Civil Rights Movement. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Love for Sale David Hajdu, 2016-10-18 A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that also may well be definitive, from the revered music critic From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. In Love for Sale, David Hajdu—one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time—draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety to become one of the biggest stars of her day to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, Hajdu presents an incisive and idiosyncratic history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations. Exhaustively researched and rich with fresh insights, Love for Sale is unbound by the usual tropes of pop music history. Hajdu, for instance, gives a star turn to Bessie Smith and the “blues queens” of the 1920s, who brought wildly transgressive sexuality to American audience decades before rock and roll. And there is Jimmie Rodgers, a former blackface minstrel performer, who created country music from the songs of rural white and blacks . . . entwined with the sound of the Swiss yodel. And then there are today’s practitioners of Electronic Dance Music, who Hajdu celebrates for carrying the pop revolution to heretofore unimaginable frontiers. At every turn, Hajdu surprises and challenges readers to think about our most familiar art in unexpected ways. Masterly and impassioned, authoritative and at times deeply personal, Love for Sale is a book of critical history informed by its writer's own unique history as a besotted fan and lifelong student of pop. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Really the Blues Mezz Mezzrow, Bernard Wolfe, 2016-02-23 Hailed as an “American counter-culture classic,” this “funny” and candid musical memoir offers a delicious glimpse into the 1930s jazz scene (The Wall Street Journal) Mezz Mezzrow was a boy from Chicago who learned to play the sax in reform school and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. He moved from Chicago to New Orleans to New York, working in brothels and bars, bootlegging, dealing drugs, getting hooked, doing time, producing records, and playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Fats Waller. Really the Blues—the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the insistence of, and with the help of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe—is the story of an unusual and unusually American life, and a portrait of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, “the odyssey of an individualist . . . the saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle where everyone was too busy making money.” |
| bessie smith impact on society: Jazz People Dan Morgenstern, 1993-08-21 This work portrays the giants of jazz, relates what they achieved, and tells how they made their way in a world not always ready for them. The text offers a clear, informative history of the art, and the photographs present Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Charles Mingus, Benny Godman, Louis Armstrong and scores of others. These haunting photographs are supplemented with some rare vintage prints to tell the whole story of jazz from Buddy Bolden to Anthony Braxton. |
| bessie smith impact on society: The Easy Fake Book (Songbook) Hal Leonard Corp., 2000-01-01 (Fake Book). This follow-up to the popular Your First Fake Book includes over 100 more great songs that even beginning-level musicians can enjoy playing! It features the same larger notation with simplified harmonies and melodies, all songs in the key of C, and introductions for each song, to add a more finished sound to the arrangements. The songs are in many musical styles and include: Alfie * All I Ask of You * All My Loving * Always on My Mind * Autumn in New York * Blue Skies * Cabaret * Crazy * Fields of Gold * Go the Distance * God Bless' the Child * Great Balls of Fire * Hey, Good Lookin' * How Deep Is Your Love * I'll Be There * If * Imagine * Jailhouse Rock * Kansas City * Memory * Michelle * Misty * My Girl * My Heart Will Go On * People * Stand by Me * Star Dust * Tangerine * Tears in Heaven * Tennessee Waltz * Unchained Melody * What a Wonderful World * What'll I Do? * You've Got a Friend * and more. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Black Popular Music in America Arnold Shaw, 1986 As Shaw correctly states, no single volume covers the history of black popular music in its entirety, and most studies have focused on the white mainstream. American pop music is in fact a blend of black and white musical influences that can be better understood if explored from a black perspective. Shaw examines five key black stylesminstrelsy, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and bluesanalyzing the origins and developments of each, profiling important artists and songs, and exploring the white synthesis. Often the synthesis has amounted to little more than a soulless white imitation of inspired black stylistic innovations. |
| bessie smith impact on society: Getting the Blues Stephen J. Nichols, 2008-09 A vivid investigation of how blues music teaches listeners about sin, suffering, marginalization, lamentation, and worship. |
Bessie (film) - Wikipedia
Bessie is a 2015 HBO TV film about the American blues singer Bessie Smith, and focuses on her transformation as a struggling young singer into "The Empress of the Blues". The film is …
Bessie (TV Movie 2015) - IMDb
Bessie: Directed by Dee Rees. With Queen Latifah, Kamryn Johnson, Rikki McKinney, Alan T. Coleman. The story of legendary blues performer Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the …
Bessie Smith | Biography, Songs, Music, Death, & Facts ...
May 9, 2025 · Bessie Smith, American singer, one of the greatest blues vocalists. Known as the ‘Empress of the Blues,’ she was a bold, supremely confident artist who sang with breathtaking …
Bessie Smith - Wikipedia
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1892 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues" and formerly Queen of …
Bessie London – Perfectly on-trend and practical,shop the ...
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Bessie (2015) - Rotten Tomatoes
Discover reviews, ratings, and trailers for Bessie (2015) on Rotten Tomatoes. Stay updated with critic and audience scores today!
Bessie (2015) | Watch the Movie on HBO | HBO.com
Queen Latifah stars as Bessie Smith in this vivid portrait of the legendary 20th century blues singer.
Watch Bessie | Prime Video - amazon.com
Queen Latifah stars as Bessie Smith in this vivid portrait of the legendary 20th century blues singer.
Bessie movie review & film summary (2015) - Roger Ebert
May 15, 2015 · HBO’s “Bessie,” premiering Saturday on the network, is a flawed drama that nonetheless warrants a look simply because of the bright spotlight it gives the underrated …
Life Story: Bessie Smith (1894 or 1895–1937)
Bessie was the highest-paid Black performing artist in the country. She earned almost $2,000 per week traveling as the “Empress of the Blues.” She was so successful that she bought a …
Bessie (film) - Wikipedia
Bessie is a 2015 HBO TV film about the American blues singer Bessie Smith, and focuses on her transformation as a struggling young singer into "The Empress of the Blues". The film is directed …
Bessie (TV Movie 2015) - IMDb
Bessie: Directed by Dee Rees. With Queen Latifah, Kamryn Johnson, Rikki McKinney, Alan T. Coleman. The story of legendary blues performer Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the …
Bessie Smith | Biography, Songs, Music, Death, & Facts ...
May 9, 2025 · Bessie Smith, American singer, one of the greatest blues vocalists. Known as the ‘Empress of the Blues,’ she was a bold, supremely confident artist who sang with breathtaking …
Bessie Smith - Wikipedia
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1892 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues" and formerly Queen of the …
Bessie London – Perfectly on-trend and practical,shop the ...
Follow on Instagram. Join our newsletter and get a 10% off treat.
Bessie (2015) - Rotten Tomatoes
Discover reviews, ratings, and trailers for Bessie (2015) on Rotten Tomatoes. Stay updated with critic and audience scores today!
Bessie (2015) | Watch the Movie on HBO | HBO.com
Queen Latifah stars as Bessie Smith in this vivid portrait of the legendary 20th century blues singer.
Watch Bessie | Prime Video - amazon.com
Queen Latifah stars as Bessie Smith in this vivid portrait of the legendary 20th century blues singer.
Bessie movie review & film summary (2015) - Roger Ebert
May 15, 2015 · HBO’s “Bessie,” premiering Saturday on the network, is a flawed drama that nonetheless warrants a look simply because of the bright spotlight it gives the underrated talents …
Life Story: Bessie Smith (1894 or 1895–1937)
Bessie was the highest-paid Black performing artist in the country. She earned almost $2,000 per week traveling as the “Empress of the Blues.” She was so successful that she bought a custom …
