[Dixielandjazz] "The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith" reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

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Making Musical Mischief
The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, St. Luke's Theatre
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2011
In the century or so that the blues have been documented, there has been no shortage
of larger-than-life characters. But of all the near-mythic figures who have sung
the blues, only one was so universally recognized as "the World's Greatest Blues
Singer" that even her headstone proclaimed her as such. Bessie Smith (1894-1937)
was the first superstar of the blues, and the woman who did more than almost anyone
to establish the commercial viability of African-American music, particularly on
recordings. Without resorting to imitation, singer-actress Miche Braden captures
the spirit and the greater truth of Smith's "life and blues" in this production.
Although Smith died younger than her greatest disciple, Billie Holiday, as Ms. Braden
purposefully shows, Bessie Smith was nobody's victim. The defiant energy and musical
brilliance of "the Empress" shines through in this affectionate portrayal.
Re-creating an iconic figure, musical or otherwise, is a tricky business: Last week
at Feinstein's, Rebecca Kilgore swung the Marilyn Monroe songbook in a style completely
different from the screen goddess; in Shana Farr's excellent Julie Andrews tribute
at the Metropolitan Room, she sang in a compatible soprano without trying to look
or sound like Ms. Andrews. Ms. Braden's task is the hardest: she has to convince
the audience to suspend its disbelief and go along with the conceit that she is Bessie
Smith, at least for 90 minutes, and it's a voice well known from 160 classic recordings,
most of which have been readily available for 80 years.
"The Devil's Music" begins with the announcement of Bessie Smith's funeral, following
her death in Clarksdale, Miss. (which was already ground zero for a whole other variety
of the blues). We then flash back to a week earlier, taking us to Braden-as-Smith
getting ready for what she thought would be just another show. Obviously, she has
no idea what fate has in store for her -- that she will die at the young age of 43
but, at the same time, live forever through the blues -- although playwright Angelo
Parra includes a few instances of foreshadowing in which the mention of death gives
Smith an ominous chill.
Along with accepting that Ms. Braden is Bessie, we also have to buy the idea that
she's somehow talking to a theater full of people, as well as her three musicians
(Aaron Graves on piano, Anthony E. Nelson Jr. on saxophone and clarinet, and bassist
Jim Hankins as "pickles"). She takes us through a story that's not as familiar as
it should be, from her hardscrabble upbringing in Chattanooga, Tenn., her apprenticeship
with blues pioneer Ma Rainey (represented by "Blame It on the Blues"), her breakthrough
as one of the best-selling "race-records" artists of the 1920s, and the fits and
starts as the jazz age gave way to the depression and the blues lost ground to the
new "swing" music. The show also gives us her love affairs with men (and women) and
whiskey. Ms. Braden gives us Bessie unbound and unrepentant.
Ms. Braden doesn't try to capture the Empress's power and projection, but as with
the biography, she gives us the general truth of Bessie Smith, balancing her regulation
12-bar blues ("Downhearted Blues") and numbers in a more general song form ("A Hot
Time in the Old Town") with a dark, throaty style all her own. Having wisely garnered
details from Chris Albertson's definitive biography, the script astutely avoids the
oft-repeated and apocryphal tale that Smith died as a victim of white racism. Like
I said, even in death Bessie Smith was nobody's victim.


--Bob Ringwald
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