Bessie Smith "The Empress of Blues" as she is known to the blues community. She grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her family was very poor and she was left alone as her parents were taken from her, just before she was an adult. She was a large woman about 200 pounds and stood six feet tall. She took no gruff from any one man, woman or child.
             For many black Americans she represented the true sprit of emancipation.
             Her huge sweeping voice and was capable of strength and tenderness. She could make the notes express her true feeling to her audience. That was not all that encompassed her life she was an alcoholic and like to drink. Her drink of choice was gin she even expresses her like for it, in the song "Gin House Blues and Me and My Gin".
             1912 was a big turning point in her life she was given the chance to perform on the Vaudeville stage. She was not alone in the fight to get on vaudeville her brother Clarence had helped her get where she need to be. Bessie was feature on the show Ma and Pa Rainey. Ma and Pa quickly became Bessie greatest mentor.
             Around 1923 she was off to New York to record on the Columbia label. Bessie did a rendition of the "St. Louis Blues" with Louis Armstrong and some consider it to be the finest recording of the 1920's. Bessie was touring though the mid-twenties and was the highest paid black entertainer in that time earning two thousand dollars a week.
             Bessie worked with some of the greatest artist of Jazz and Blues. Time would not always be kind for her career as a musician. The depression hit and her style was on its way out as the popular music of the age. Also the talking movie had surfaced as the most popular form of entertainment and this caused hardship of the recording company.
             Even though she was still working making money was harder as she continued to redefine herself as artist. She was still big in the south this was after she h...