Bessie Smith had been in show business since she was a teenager. In 1912, she joined a traveling vaudeville troupe, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and spent the next decade singing in minstrel shows and cabarets all around the South.
In 1923, Smith released her first record, “Down-Hearted Blues.” It sold nearly 800,000 copies and made her a superstar. In fact, by the end of the 1920s, Smith had made more money than any black performer ever had. She performed and recorded with luminaries like Clarence Williams, Louis Armstrong, and Fletcher Henderson’s band and she starred in the 1929 film “St. LouisBlues.”
What happened to Bessie Smith?
Legendary blues singer Bessie Smith is buried near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 4, 1937. Some 7,000 mourners attended her funeral. Smith had been killed a few days before when the old Packard she was driving hit a parked truck near Coahoma, Mississippi, between Clarksdale and Memphis. There is no record of Smith’s birth date, but she was about 43.
