Bessie Smith Archives - chimesfreedom

April 15 is tax day, but it is also the birthday of great blues singer Bessie Smith, who was born April 15, 1894. Chimesfreedom has previously discussed Smith and her performance of “St. Louis Blues,” so today we consider a song about her that was written by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson of The Band.

In “Bessie Smith,” the singer describes a trip to see Smith. It appears the singer is in love with her, but he questions whether or not the love is based on the way she could sing.

Now in my day I’ve made some foolish moves;
But back then, I didn’t worry ’bout a thing;
And now again I still wonder to myself;
Was it her sweet love or the way that she could sing?

Apparently, time has passed since the singer last saw his love. And he wonders how she will react when she sees him again (“When she sees me will she know what I’ve been through? / Will old times start to feelin’ like new?”). We first heard the song when it came out on The Basement Tapes made by The Band and Bob Dylan, although only The Band plays on the song and there is some debate about when the song was actually written and recorded. (Update: Unfortunately, the Band’s version of “Bessie Smith” is no longer available on YouTube.)

In a thorough discussion of the history of the song, Peter Viney quotes one of Danko’s obituaries describing “Bessie Smith” as “a sepia-styled valentine to the fine line between respect and adoration, and the ways in which music blurs them both into love.” Viney also raises the possibility that the song is about an “appointment with death,” because by the time it was written and recorded, Bessie Smith had been dead for decades.

Several artists have covered “Bessie Smith,” including Ray Lamontagne and Joe Henry. Norah Jones performs a nice cover of “Bessie Smith” in this video. Check it out.

Bessie Smith died from injuries from a car accident in 1937, just as she was starting a comeback. Although The Band’s song about her was not done in her style of singing, The Band was well aware of the history of American music, and “Bessie Smith” was a nice tribute to an important American singer. And so it is our birthday tribute too.

What is your favorite Bessie Smith song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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As we did for the Super Bowl teams from Pittsburgh and Wisconsin, Chimesfreedom continues with songs related to the locales of the two Major League Baseball World Series teams. While the previous post focused on the Texas Rangers, this post considers the home of the St. Louis Cardinals with “St. Louis Blues,” performed by the great Bessie Smith.

In “St. Louis Blues,” by the legendary W.C. Handy, the singer tells about her man leaving her for a woman in St. Louis: “St. Louis woman with her diamond rings / Pulls that man ’round by her apron strings.” As she contemplates her sadness and considers going to the city to try to bring him home, she tells us, “I love that man like a schoolboy loves his pie / Like a Kentucky Colonel loves his mint and rye.”

Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was one of the greatest blues and jazz singers of the 1920s and 1930s, recording several duets with Louis Armstrong. We are fortunate to have her on film because she appeared in the movie, St. Louis Blues in 1929. But by the end of that decade, her career suffered from the Depression and her alcoholism.

As her career was recovering in the 1930s, through recording with John Hammond and through a return to performances in shows and clubs, she died from injuries in a car accident in 1937. Thousands of mourners came to pay tribute to her coffin in Philadelphia, and thousands more attended her funeral. But there was no money to mark her grave. In 1970, Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, a child of one of Smith’s domestic employees, paid for a tombstone to mark the grave of the great Bessie Smith. Joplin once said, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it. She’s the reason I started singing, really.”