The Blues and Bessie Smith

1. PERSONAL STATEMENT

I am interested in the topic of Bessie Smith, her music, herself as a symbol of the Southern Rebel, and how her death was used to draw attention to the issue of segregation in the South and what the reality of the story actually was. Bessie Smith helped to advance the jazz era by singing the blues and exploring themes of black identity, gender, and sexuality through the blues genre. Her own life was an exploration of these themes as well and it is interesting to see how these themes of race, gender, and identity intersect throughout her life, career and death. This topic personally interests me because I enjoy Bessie Smith’s voice and music and I was also moved by Edward Albee’s play The Death of Bessie Smith with used the myth that Smith was denied entry into a white’s only hospital as the basis of his drama—even though it turns out Smith was never actually taken to a white’s only hospital. This topic is an important part of Southern Cultures and Music because it shows how integrated race, gender, drama, jazz, blues, and the idea of the Rebel are both in reality and in the way reality is perceived and mythologized.

2. TOPIC CHOICE DISCUSSION

The themes that stand out are gender, race, blues, spirituality, rebellion, sexuality, and myth. Bessie Smith represented so many sides of the blues and jazz era, and she was nicknamed the Empress of the Blues and even starred in W. C. Handy’s film Saint Louis Blues because of her immense popularity in the 1920s and 1930s. Handy himself was known as Father of the Blues and had recorded Muscle Shoals Blues, so their connection is relevant and helps to play up the mythological status of Bessie Smith, which in turn helped to accentuate the undertones and issues of race that were used by authors like Albee following her death to advance the discussion on race in America. Understanding the real Bessie Smith in all of this can be helpful in getting to real heart and truth of the matter.

3. INDEPENDENT RESEARCH DEFENSE

This research will be important because it will help to deconstruct the era in which Bessie Smith lived and show how truth and myth often intersect in ways to advance larger social themes that are important to society at a given point in time. To what extent did Bessie Smith actually embody the idea of the Rebel or what extent was she personally motivated by the blues, by spirituals like “On Revival Day”—these are questions that can help to show how the stories of the blues and the reality of the lives of blues performers create new myths about American culture that have to be unpacked in order for true history to be properly understood.

4. LITERATURE REVIEW

In the article by O’Connell (2013) entitled “The Color of the Blues: Considering Revisionist Blues Scholarship,” there is a focus on deconstructing the stereotypes about the blues: for example, many researchers “have challenged depictions of the blues as an ‘authentic’ folk music with roots firmly within working class African American culture, most often presented at odds with modernity and consumer capitalism,” research which has in turn “taken the shape of dismantling the myth of the ‘bluesman,’ revered as a rebel that renounced the worldly benefits of commercial success for his music” (p. 61). This is important because “these revisionist writers have emphasize the irreconcilable variance between the blues as it really was and that which white middle-class enthusiasts and record collectors of the Sixties ‘invented’ and wanted to see” (O’Connell, 2013, p. 61). Other researchers have attempted to connect the real life of the blues to the interpretation that followed which helped to create the blues mythology. O’Connell’s article in Southern Cultures deals with the issue of navigating the history and myths of the blues in order to understand the reality.

Davis (1999) details the reality of Smith’s life and career in her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, in which she identifies how race, gender and the blues intersect in multiple ways through the works of artists like Smith. Davis (1999) points out that Smith’s story is important because “the reality-oriented dimension of her songs—with all their secret allusions—rendered them easily accessible to her black audiences. As one jazz critic pointed out in a tribute to Smith five years after her death, ‘her art was real, she expressed the spirit of her people, to whom she remained faithful all her life….her message was mixed with pain, oppression and the horrors of lynch law—a panorama of a great race, and a cowardly foe” (p. 143). Understanding where historical interpretation and reality meet in the life, career and death of Bessie Smith is essential to understanding the blues in the larger context and how themes of race and the Rebel of the South develop in time to advance ideas that are larger than life.

Morton (1993) describes the impact that Bessie Smith had on another blues artist—DeFord Bailey and how that latter learned the song “Muscle Shoals Blues” from Smith after watching her vaudeville performance. Morton (1993) states that DeFord remembered Smith, “generally considered the greatest of classic blues singers,” and how “she came through with her show [and] that woman could really sing. When I done my part, I went home so I could turn my radio on and hear her and see how she sounded” (p. 63). The impact of Smith on other artists is important to consider and Morton shows that this is so.

5. METHODOLOGY

I envision my personal research journey as taking me south to the Bessie Smith Cultural Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I would like to see firsthand the legacy of Bessie Smith as it has been culturally constructed today and see how the myth of the Empress of the Blues is currently being communicated. I would like to meet with the directors of the Cultural Center and interview them about Bessie Smith’s story, her legacy, her life, career and death. Starter questions that I would ask would be: 1) How would you define the legacy of Bessie Smith and how has her story been mythologized? 2) What does Bessie Smith represent today and what did she represent during her prime years?

6. WHAT PREPARATION DO YOU NEED TO DO FOR THIS RESEARCH?

I will not need to learn a new language, but I will need to read up on Bessie Smith’s life, career and death so that I am well-informed when I go to talk to these people. I would like to interview many people associated with the Cultural Center, including guests to see whether there are unique perspectives on Bessie Smith and to see where ideas of the myth and the reality as well as the themes of race, gender, the Rebel, and blues diverge and converge according to different people there. I would ask them questions about why they came to the Cultural Center, what they know about Bessie Smith, what their sense of the blues is, and what they know of her life and death. Their knowledge will help to convey to me a sense of how popular culture has shaped the story of the Empress of the Blues and either revised it into an exaggerated, larger than life narrative or faithfully rendered it for public consumption.