Classic female blues
Encyclopedia
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female vocalists accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles, and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey
, Bessie Smith
, Ethel Waters
, and the other singers of this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues.
(1886–1939), known as the “Mother of the Blues”, is credited as the first to perform the blues on stage as popular entertainment when she began incorporating blues into her act of show songs and comedy
around 1902. Rainey had heard a woman singing about the man she’d lost, learned the song, and began using it as her closing number, calling it “the blues". Rainey's example was followed by other young women who followed her path in the tent show circuit, one of the few venues available to black performers. Most were booked on the black-owned T.O.B.A. (Theatre Owners Booking Association) circuit.
A key figure in popularizing the blues was composer W. C. Handy
, who published the first of his blues songs in 1912. His compositions, notably "Memphis Blues
'" and "St. Louis Blues
", quickly became standards for blues singers. Songs modeled on Handy's were performed in black stage shows, and were performed and recorded by white vaudevillians such as Sophie Tucker
.
songwriter
and music publisher Perry Bradford
began a campaign to convince record companies that black consumers would eagerly purchase recordings by black performers. Bradford's persistence finally persuaded the General Phonograph Company to record the New York-based cabaret singer Mamie Smith
in their Okeh studio on February 14, 1920. There they recorded two non-blues songs which, when released without fanfare that summer, produced a great sales success. On August 10, Mamie Smith became the first black woman to record the blues when she was brought back into the studio to record “Crazy Blues". The record sold over 75,000 copies in its first month, an extraordinary figure for the time. Smith became known as “America’s First Lady of the Blues”. Blues became a nationwide craze, and the recording industry actively scouted, booked and recorded hundreds of black female singers.
Marketed exclusively to African-American consumers, largely by advertisements in black newspapers such as The Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier
, the blues recordings were typically labeled as "race records" to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well—for instance, Lucille Hegamin
's recordings on the Paramount
label in 1922, which were issued as part of the label's "popular" series rather than its "race" series.
The most popular of the classic blues singers was Tennessee
-born Bessie Smith, who first recorded in 1923. Known as the “Empress of the Blues", she possessed a large voice with a “T’ain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do” attitude. Bessie (who was unrelated to Mamie Smith) had toured on the T. O. B. A. circuit since 1912, originally as a chorus girl; by 1918 she was appearing in her own revue in Atlantic City, New Jersey
. She struggled initially to be recorded—three companies turned her down before she was signed with Columbia
. She eventually became the highest-paid black artist of the 1920s, and recorded over 160 songs.
Ma Rainey, whose popularity in the South was unrivaled, was little-known in the cities of the North until 1923, when she made her first recordings. She and Bessie Smith brought about a change in the style of the classic blues, as audiences came to prefer their rougher, earthier sound to that of the lighter-voiced, more refined blues singers who had preceded them on record. Ma Rainey recorded over 100 songs, 24 of them her own compositions. According to jazz historian Dan Morgenstern, “Bessie Smith (and all the others who followed in time) learned their art and craft from Ma, directly or indirectly.”
Other classic blues singers who recorded extensively were Ethel Waters, Ida Cox
, Clara Smith
, and Sara Martin
. Victoria Spivey
and her cousin Sippie Wallace
were both from Texas
. Victoria Spivey was inspired by a Mamie Smith performance to become a blues singer, and achieved an overnight success in 1926 when Okeh released her first recording, her original “Black Snake Blues.” In 1929 she appeared in the first all-black talking film.
in 1926, a more "down-home", less urbane form of blues became popular, typically performed by men who were self-accompanied on guitar or piano. The effect of the Great Depression
on black vaudeville and the recording industry, and also the trend toward Swing music in the 1930s, ended the careers of most of the classic blues singers. Some, like Ethel Waters, adapted to changing musical styles; some, like Lucille Hegamin and Sara Martin, subsequently worked mainly outside the entertainment field; others, like Hattie McDaniel
and Edith Wilson
, had success as actors in film and radio. Bessie Smith died in a car crash in 1937, at the age of 41. Lionel Hampton
is quoted as saying, “Had she lived, Bessie would’ve been right up there on top with the rest of us in the Swing
Era.”
In the 1960s a revival of interest in the blues brought Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter
, Edith Wilson and Victoria Spivey back to the concert stage. In 1961 Victoria Spivey started her own record label
, Spivey Records. In addition to recording herself, she recorded Lucille Hegamin, Memphis Slim
, Lonnie Johnson
and others.
and Janis Joplin
are among those who name Bessie Smith as an influence. According to LeRoi Jones, phonograph recordings of the classic blues singers "affected the existing folk tradition and created another kind of tradition that was unlike any other in the past".
Daphne Duval Harrison says that the blues women's contributions included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered the emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz, Broadway musicals, torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s, gospel, rhythm and blues, and eventually rock and roll."
Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues....
, Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
, Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...
, and the other singers of this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues.
Beginnings
Blues, a form of black folk music originating in the American south, functioned until about 1900 mainly as vocal work songs. Gertrude “Ma” RaineyMa Rainey
Ma Rainey was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues....
(1886–1939), known as the “Mother of the Blues”, is credited as the first to perform the blues on stage as popular entertainment when she began incorporating blues into her act of show songs and comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
around 1902. Rainey had heard a woman singing about the man she’d lost, learned the song, and began using it as her closing number, calling it “the blues". Rainey's example was followed by other young women who followed her path in the tent show circuit, one of the few venues available to black performers. Most were booked on the black-owned T.O.B.A. (Theatre Owners Booking Association) circuit.
A key figure in popularizing the blues was composer W. C. Handy
W. C. Handy
William Christopher Handy was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the "Father of the Blues"....
, who published the first of his blues songs in 1912. His compositions, notably "Memphis Blues
Memphis blues
The Memphis blues is a style of blues music that was created in the 1920s and 1930s by Memphis-area musicians like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie...
'" and "St. Louis Blues
St. Louis Blues
The St. Louis Blues are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . The team is named after the famous W. C. Handy song "St. Louis Blues", and plays in the 19,150-seat Scottrade...
", quickly became standards for blues singers. Songs modeled on Handy's were performed in black stage shows, and were performed and recorded by white vaudevillians such as Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...
.
1920s
In 1919, Handy and the HarlemHarlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
and music publisher Perry Bradford
Perry Bradford
Perry Bradford was an African American composer, songwriter, and vaudeville performer....
began a campaign to convince record companies that black consumers would eagerly purchase recordings by black performers. Bradford's persistence finally persuaded the General Phonograph Company to record the New York-based cabaret singer Mamie Smith
Mamie Smith
-External links:* African American Registry* with photos* with .ram files of her early recordings* NPR special on the selection on "Crazy Blues" to the 2005...
in their Okeh studio on February 14, 1920. There they recorded two non-blues songs which, when released without fanfare that summer, produced a great sales success. On August 10, Mamie Smith became the first black woman to record the blues when she was brought back into the studio to record “Crazy Blues". The record sold over 75,000 copies in its first month, an extraordinary figure for the time. Smith became known as “America’s First Lady of the Blues”. Blues became a nationwide craze, and the recording industry actively scouted, booked and recorded hundreds of black female singers.
Marketed exclusively to African-American consumers, largely by advertisements in black newspapers such as The Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier
Pittsburgh Courier
The Pittsburgh Courier was an American newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was published from 1907 to 1965. Once the country's most widely circulated Black newspaper, the legacy and influence of the Pittsburgh Courier is unparalleled.A pillar of the Black Press, it rose...
, the blues recordings were typically labeled as "race records" to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well—for instance, Lucille Hegamin
Lucille Hegamin
Lucille Nelson Hegamin was an American singer and entertainer, and a pioneer African American blues recording artist.-Life and career:...
's recordings on the Paramount
Paramount Records
Paramount Records was an American record label, best known for its recordings of African-American jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson.-Early years:...
label in 1922, which were issued as part of the label's "popular" series rather than its "race" series.
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
-born Bessie Smith, who first recorded in 1923. Known as the “Empress of the Blues", she possessed a large voice with a “T’ain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do” attitude. Bessie (who was unrelated to Mamie Smith) had toured on the T. O. B. A. circuit since 1912, originally as a chorus girl; by 1918 she was appearing in her own revue in Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and a nationally renowned resort city for gambling, shopping and fine dining. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast...
. She struggled initially to be recorded—three companies turned her down before she was signed with Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
. She eventually became the highest-paid black artist of the 1920s, and recorded over 160 songs.
Ma Rainey, whose popularity in the South was unrivaled, was little-known in the cities of the North until 1923, when she made her first recordings. She and Bessie Smith brought about a change in the style of the classic blues, as audiences came to prefer their rougher, earthier sound to that of the lighter-voiced, more refined blues singers who had preceded them on record. Ma Rainey recorded over 100 songs, 24 of them her own compositions. According to jazz historian Dan Morgenstern, “Bessie Smith (and all the others who followed in time) learned their art and craft from Ma, directly or indirectly.”
Other classic blues singers who recorded extensively were Ethel Waters, Ida Cox
Ida Cox
Ida Cox was an African American singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings...
, Clara Smith
Clara Smith
Clara Smith was an American classic female blues singer. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors.-Career:...
, and Sara Martin
Sara Martin
Sara Martin was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as "The Famous Moanin' Mama" and "The Colored Sophie Tucker"...
. Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey was an American blues singer and songwriter. She is best known for her recordings of "Dope Head Blues" and "Organ Grinder Blues", and Spivey variously worked with her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey, and with Bob Dylan, Lonnie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence...
and her cousin Sippie Wallace
Sippie Wallace
Sippie Wallace was an American singer-songwriter. Her early career in local tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by herself or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas...
were both from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. Victoria Spivey was inspired by a Mamie Smith performance to become a blues singer, and achieved an overnight success in 1926 when Okeh released her first recording, her original “Black Snake Blues.” In 1929 she appeared in the first all-black talking film.
Decline and revival
By 1928, the vogue for the classic blues style was waning. With the success of the first commercial recordings of Blind Lemon JeffersonBlind Lemon Jefferson
"Blind" Lemon Jefferson was an American blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been titled "Father of the Texas Blues"....
in 1926, a more "down-home", less urbane form of blues became popular, typically performed by men who were self-accompanied on guitar or piano. The effect of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
on black vaudeville and the recording industry, and also the trend toward Swing music in the 1930s, ended the careers of most of the classic blues singers. Some, like Ethel Waters, adapted to changing musical styles; some, like Lucille Hegamin and Sara Martin, subsequently worked mainly outside the entertainment field; others, like Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind ....
and Edith Wilson
Edith Wilson (singer)
Edith Wilson was an American blues singer and vaudeville performer.-Biography:Born Edith Goodall in Louisville, Kentucky, Wilson's first professional experience came in 1919 in Louisville's Park Theater. Lena Wilson and her brother, Danny, performed in Louisville; Edith married Danny and joined...
, had success as actors in film and radio. Bessie Smith died in a car crash in 1937, at the age of 41. Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
is quoted as saying, “Had she lived, Bessie would’ve been right up there on top with the rest of us in the Swing
Swing (genre)
Swing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States...
Era.”
In the 1960s a revival of interest in the blues brought Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter
Alberta Hunter
Alberta Hunter was an American blues singer, songwriter, and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith...
, Edith Wilson and Victoria Spivey back to the concert stage. In 1961 Victoria Spivey started her own record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, Spivey Records. In addition to recording herself, she recorded Lucille Hegamin, Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...
, Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...
and others.
Significance
The classic female blues singers were pioneers in the record industry, among the first black singers and blues artists recorded. They were also instrumental in popularizing the 12-bar blues throughout the US. Mahalia JacksonMahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson – January 27, 1972) was an African-American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel"...
and Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
are among those who name Bessie Smith as an influence. According to LeRoi Jones, phonograph recordings of the classic blues singers "affected the existing folk tradition and created another kind of tradition that was unlike any other in the past".
Daphne Duval Harrison says that the blues women's contributions included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered the emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz, Broadway musicals, torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s, gospel, rhythm and blues, and eventually rock and roll."