Imagine this; you are listening to blues, country blues, vaudeville, and jazz tunes, while watching the mesmerising showmanship of the “Empress of Blues.” Not only did she sing about acceptance of defeat by the cruel and indifferent world, Smith also expressed the hopes and frustrations of a whole generation of African Americans. Despite her tumultuous early life, Bessie Smith was known as a bold and supremely confident woman who was the first and best of many accomplishments throughout her life, making her, without a doubt, the best of her time. Bessie Smith was born on April 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Smith had a mother, father, and seven brothers. Her mother, father, and two brothers died before she turned nine years old, which greatly impacted her life. Viola Smith, Bessie’s eldest sister, took up the mother role of their family, and to help pay rent, Bessie and one of her brothers began street performing. The brother Bessie would street perform with began performing minstrel troupes, which is where she got inspiration from. After finishing eighth grade, Smith began her entertainment career. She began working in the Moses Stokes minstrel show, and later in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, which Pa and Ma Rainey, both popular blues …show more content…
Although Bessie Smith became less popular than she had been, she was still well known and frequently listened to. However, on September 26, 1937, while Smith was on her way to a concert, her companion at the time, Richard Morgan, lost control of their car after sideswiping a truck. Bessie Smith died later that day at a hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi, from her wounds. Bessie Smith influenced many powerful African American artists, such as, Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. Her bold, confident, and persistent personality will forever be remembered and will inspire future generations to
Ethel Waters overcame a very tough childhood to become one of the most well known African American entertainers of her time. Her story, The Eye on the Sparrow, goes into great detail about her life and how she evolved from taking care of addicts to becoming the star of her own show. Ethel was born by her mother being raped at a young age. Her father, John Waters, was a pianist who played no role in Ethel’s life. She was raised in poverty and it was rare for her to live in the same place for over a year. Ethel never fit in with the rest of the crowd; she was a big girl, about five nine when she was a teenager, and was exposed to mature things early in her life. This is what helped shape Ethel to be the strong, independent woman she is.
When Bessie graduated from high school, she enrolled in the Colored Agricultural and Normal University, which is now Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma. But with money issues she had to drop out after her first semester because all her savings had run out. But she could have stayed and work, but her mother needed help at home so Bessie gave up school just to help her mom out at home. Not long after that she moved to Chicago in 1915, where her brother was then living, and attended beauty school. She spent her early years in World War 1 working as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop. She operated a small but profitable chili parlor.
Bessie Smith was a rough, crude, violent woman. She was also the greatest of the classic Blues singers of the 1920s. Bessie started out as a street musician in Chattanooga. In 1912 Bessie joined a traveling show as a dancer and singer. The show featured Pa and Ma Rainey, and Smith developed a friendship with Ma. Ma Rainey was Bessie's mentor and she stayed with her show until 1915. Bessie then joined the T.O.B.A. vaudeville circuit and gradually built up her own following in the south and along the eastern seaboard. By the early 1920s she was one of the most popular Blues singers in vaudeville. In 1923 she made her recording debut on Columbia, accompanied by pianist Clarence Williams. They recorded "Gulf Coast Blues" and "Down Hearted Blues." The record sold more than 750,000 copies that same year, rivaling the success of Blues singer Mamie Smith (no relation). Throughout the 1920s Smith recorded with many of the great Jazz musicians of that era, including Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman and Louis Armstrong. Her rendition of "St. Louis Blues" with Armstrong is considered by most critics to be one of finest recordings of the 1920s. Bessie Smith was one of the biggest African-American stars of the 1920s and was popular with both Whites and African-Americans, but by 1931 the Classic Blues style of Bessie Smith was out of style and the Depression, radio, and sound movies had all damaged the record companies' ability to sell records so Columbia dropped Smith from its roster. In 1933 she recorded for the last time under the direction of John Hammond for Okeh. The session was released under the name of Bessie Smith accompanied by Buck and his Band. Despite having no record company Smith was still very po...
...ng to this day, she is one of few who could compete with the men of hip-hop, but she never pretended to be anything but a woman. She not only sang about female empowerment, but she wrote about being a woman from the insecurities that we as women sometimes feel to the nirvana of being in love. Sensuality and femininity were always as important to her which was her strength, and message to get out to women especially those of color.
Born Gertrude Pridgett in Georgia in 1886 to parents who had both performed in the minstrel shows, she was exposed to music at a very early age. At the age of fourteen, she performed in a local talent show called “The Bunch of Blackberries,” and by 1900 she was regularly singing in public.2 Over the next couple of decades, she worked in a variety of traveling minstrel shows, including Tolliver's Circus and Musical Extravaganza, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels; she was one of the first women to incorporate the blues into minstrelsy. It was while working with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels that she met William Rainey, whom she married in 1904; together, they toured as “Ma and Pa Rainey: Assassinators of the Blues.” By the early 1920s, she was a star of the Theater Owners' Booking Agency (TOBA), which were white-...
Her family ties to the south, her unique talent, her ability to travel and make money are similar to the Blues women movement that preceded her. It can be said that Nina Simone goes a step further the by directly attacking inequities pertaining to race and gender in her music. However, what distinguishes her is her unique musicianship and that is what ultimately garners her massive exposure and experiences than those of her past contemporaries. Like the Blues women Simone expands ideas pertaining to self-expression, identity and beauty as they relate to black women. She does this by embracing what is definitively African American and connecting that to a historical context. By doing so she is the embodiment of a political statement. Her journey which began like many entertaine...
“Sam was a prince of a man” were the words used to describe the late great by “the Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin (Crossing Over). Sam Cooke was far more than a prince he was a king. Cooke’s life and legacy is one that will never be matched. He was a pioneer in the music business, an unmatched vocalist, the voice of the civil rights movement, and a man with an insatiable appetite for women. He was a musical pioneer creating a sound that the world had never heard before. Cooke successfully crossed pop music and gospel to create soul music. The mastermind that is Sam Cooke created a song that would “…exemplify the sixties' Civil Rights Movement” (Wikipedia). Sam Cooke was at the height of his career when he was murder. Cooke was an extraordinary man with an ordinary weakness, his desire for women. These desires ultimately lead to his untimely death. Sam Cooke was a man of many faces the artist, the activist, the administrator, and finally the adulterer.
During this time her mother passed away and she started living with her aunt due to the abuse from her stepfather. Forced to live on the streets at times, she would try to listen to the radio every chance she got and would sneak into movie theaters to absorb the popular music of the day. Listening to singers such as Louis Armstrong, Conne Boswell, and Bing Crosby. She continued to dance with her friends for pennies and would enter multiple amateur contests in Harlem on a
Bessie Smith, also known as the Empress of the Blues, was born, according to the 1900 census, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892; a date that provided her mother. Bessie Smith was the daughter of Laura (born Owens) and William Smith. William Smith was a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher. He died before his daughter could remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, she had lost her mother and her brother as well. Her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings. In 1904, her brother, Clarence, left for joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. Bessie was to young to join and her brother left without telling her. In 1912, he returned to Chattanooga and arranged for its managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher, to give Smith an audition. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company also
It was no wonder why Billie Holiday was considered to be the woman of jazz, her sweet velvet voice carried the crowd. With hits like strange fruit that told a darker story it was easy to see where her passion came from. She told stories in her music and people across the nation were more than willing to sit down and listen to what she had to say. Billie Holiday was an icon of her time and there was not a person who listened to jazz that could say they did not know her name. Her voice was smooth with a hint of seduction that had her audiences reeling. However, things were not always so glamourous.
Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 to Susan and George Coleman who had a large family in Texas. At the time of Bessie’s birth, her parents had already been married for seventeen years and already had nine children, Bessie was the tenth, and she would later have twelve brothers and sisters. Even when she was small, Bessie had to deal with issues about race. Her father was of African American and Cherokee Indian decent, and her mother was black which made it difficult from the start for her to be accepted. Her parents were sharecroppers and her life was filled with renter farms and continuous labor. Then, when Bessie was two, her father decided to move himself and his family to Waxahacie, Texas. He thought that it would offer more opportunities for work, if he were to live in a cotton town.
Born on April 7th, 1915, was a African American girl named Billie Holiday. Little did anyone know she would grown up to be a women with a huge impact in the world of jazz music. Miss Billie Holiday was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She’s the daughter of Sarah Julia, and Clarence Holiday. Her father was a musician, and he left her mother when Billie was born to follow his dreams as a jazz guitarist. Billie Holiday didn’t have the easiest childhood. For the first ten years of her life she really struggled with the fact that her mom often left because of her job, leaving Billie to be raised by her grandmother Martha Miller. Billie
The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as “Lady Day” or “Lady”, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does it’s very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography.
Some of these figures were occasions that occurred as well as all the more critically individuals. The Harlem Renaissance made numerous open doors or as I should say gave individuals the acknowledgment they merited. The general population that profit by this development were; Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday additionally Cab Calloway just to give some examples. Duke Ellington was an expert musician and lyricist. He was extremely included in Jazz music amid the eighteenth century. Ellington was surely understood for his making of a particular gathering sound in western music call "American Music". Billie Holiday likewise known "Woman Day" was additionally included with jazz music. She was an extraordinary vocalist, had a voice that can make your heart melt. In addition to the fact that she was known from a musical point of view her memoir film called Lady Sing the Blues likewise brought consideration towards her. Woman Day was one of only a handful few that were enlisted into the Hall Of Fame from this development in the year 2000. Ultimately, Cab Calloway, a man known from his mark sound Hi-de-Ho. Calloway was additionally known for making extraordinary records; Minnie the Moocher, Reefer Man, likewise Jumpin ' Jive just to give some examples. Out of every one of his records Minnie the Moocher hit top of the outlines offering more than one million duplicates in the year
Her rejection of a black doll invokes research on children’s racial identification; her anger with her mother bespeaks her generation’s rejection of domestic work; her affair with a white man reminds us of loosening prohibitions against screen miscegenation; Mahalia Jackson’s presence at Annie’s funeral sparks associations to the singer’s participation in civil rights demonstrations, and her role in mainstreaming of black gospel music” (Fischer