Why Blues Titan Bessie Smith Still Kills It

HBO is betting that millennials will embrace a female blues singer born in the 19th century. Given the undying power of her music, HBO just might be right.

Can you guess the artist?
A strong, confident black woman rises from performing on the streets to superstardom. Her music is filled with talk of sex and violence, and her private life is just as transgressive as her lyrics. Rumors circulate about her hookups with various men and women, and she even hints at these affairs in her songs. Many are shocked, but audiences flock to her performances and her recordings sell millions of copies.
Maybe Nicki Minaj? Or Rihanna? Or some other in-your-face hip-hop diva.
No, you’re not even close.
Here’s one last clue: my mystery singer was born in 1894.
Yes, ladies such as Bessie Smith did exist back during the Victorian era. Well, at least one woman like that was around. And she became the biggest-selling black female singer of her day. Even white audiences fell under Bessie Smith’s spell, and the major record companies of the era soon figured out they needed to sign her, or find someone else who could imitate her.
But no one could really imitate Bessie Smith. Even now, almost a century after the release of her first records, she still stands out as the greatest blues singer in history. You can hear the echoes of her style in current-day divas such as Ruthie Foster, who just a few days ago got honored by the Blues Foundation as best female blues singer of the year, or Cécile McLorin Salvant, who was picked as top female jazz vocalist in the most recent Down Beat critics poll.

Frank Masi/HBO

No singer is hotter in the jazz world right now than 25-year-old Salvant, but she will sing a song by Bessie Smith at almost every performance. When I spoke to her recently about her influences, Smith’s name was the first one she mentioned. “Bessie Smith,” Salvant added, “is very important to me.”
Singers still learn from Bessie Smith, and for a very good reason. These songs work like a charm in live performance, even in the year 2015. They are filled with raw passion and raunchy comedy. They tell stories that seem just as relevant today as when Smith recorded them during the Calvin Coolidge administration. In fact, they might be even more appropriate in the current day, almost as if this blues singer from our great-grandma’s generation were sending a time capsule to millennials.
Frankly, I’m not surprised that HBO decided to turn Bessie Smith’s life into a biopic. I’m only puzzled why it took so long. Of all the celebrity entertainers from the first half of the 20th century, Bessie Smith is the one most suited for a posthumous revival. She was Nicki Minaj before there was a Nicki Minaj. She wrote the rulebook for hip-hop ladies before hip-hop existed. She was the Empress of the Blues, and her reign never really ended.

Even today I listen in rapt admiration to these old tracks, wondering how such a fragile medium of sound waves preserved in grooves on a shellac disk can contain so much life force and emotional power.

HBO’s casting of Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith was an inspired choice. Who better to play an Empress than a Queen? “I had no idea who Bessie Smith was, to be honest with you,” Latifah recently admitted to an interviewer. But after she had immersed herself in Smith’s music, she walked away in awe. “I could hear her voice in so many people who came after her,” Latifah has explained. “If there was a Bessie Smith alive today, she’d blow everyone else out of the water.” Now Latifah is charged with convincing others who know nothing about Bessie Smith why they should care about a singer whose most important recordings were made almost 90 years ago. I have a hunch that she will succeed.
Bessie Smith’s life story may be filled with rule-breaking and hell-raising, but also conforms to the classic rags-to-riches formula of traditional American narratives. Smith was an orphan before the age of ten, and survived by performing on the streets of her native Chattanooga, Tennessee along with her brother Andrew. She toured with blues singer Ma Rainey while still in her teens, but soon went out on her own as a star attraction, performing in theaters and tent shows in the South and along the Eastern Seaboard.
Smith dazzled audiences in live performance, with her larger-than-life stage presence and a big, earthy voice that could reach the back row in the days before microphones and amplification. But her recordings made her into a superstar, and even today I listen in rapt admiration to these old tracks, wondering how such a fragile medium of sound waves preserved in grooves on a shellac disk can contain so much life force and emotional power.

Source : thedailybeast.com