"The Empress of the Blues" gave voice the listeners' tribulations and yearnings of the 1920s and '30s. A new 10-CD box set collects the complete... The Mythic Power Of Bessie Smith Vocalist Bessie ...

In the days following the death of the Empress of the Blues, newspapers across the nation carried the story. One day after the Sept. 26, 1937, fatal car crash, The Chattanooga News carried the story ...

She recorded for only 10 years. But during that decade, singer Bessie Smith arguably did more than anyone to advance the blues as a bedrock of American popular music. On Feb. 16, 1923, she walked into ...

"There's some that calls the blues the devil's music. Well, honey, I done danced to the devil's music. So, I gotta give the devil his due." So says blues icon Bessie Smith, to whom the devil is a ...

The pioneering singer influenced blues, jazz, rock and beyond with her powerful voice and inventive delivery, displaying a greatness rooted in the... This essay is one in a series celebrating women ...

Miche Braden knows of what she sings. Or, at the very least, she’s able to summon at will the rebel spirit of the entertainer she so heartily embodies — Bessie Smith — in “The Devil’s Music: The Life ...

Bessie Smith is known now as the “Empress of the Blues.” The Tennessee native rose to greatness through the 1920s and ‘30s and was one of the first blues singers to make a record. Her first effort, ...

Miche Braden stars as Bessie Smith, the legendary “Empress of the Blues,” who blazed the trail for a century of performers from Aretha Franklin to Adele. Mixing classics like “Need a Little Sugar In ...

In a wonderful coincidence of timing, The Cabot, in Beverly, Ma. celebrated and honored the great and legendary blues vocalist icon, The Empress of the Blues—Bessie Smith-at the very same time the ...

The Makar of Scotland, their poet laureate, from 2016 to 2021, Jackie Kay discusses growing up Black and adopted in an all-white section of Glasgow. Her imaginary family included Bessie Smith. She ...

Smith was barnstorming the South, performing her act under a canvas tent for Black audiences or in segregated theaters. One sweltering night in July, it took her to the heart of Concord’s Black ...