Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 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 is Bessie Smith most famous for?
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the “Empress of the Blues”, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s.
Smith began forming her act around 1913, at Atlanta’s “81” Theater. By 1920, she had established a reputation in the South and along the East Coast. At the time, sales of over 100,000 copies of “Crazy Blues”, recorded for Okeh Records by the singer Mamie Smith (no relation), pointed to a new market.
