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

[Robert Ringwald]

A Big Voice Full of Blues, Bawdy and Unapologetic
by Rachel Saltz
New York Times, July 4, 2011
When Miche Braden plants herself at the front of the stage, shimmies a little and
sings the blues, "The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith" finds its
reason for being. As Bessie, Ms. Braden has the requisite big voice -- she knows
when to let it soar and when to keep it at an insinuatingly low simmer -- and her
committed performance gives you glimmers of what the bawdy-talking, hooch-swilling
(she hates the store-bought stuff), unapologetically bisexual Bessie must have been
like.
Ms. Braden keeps "The Devil's Music," a Penguin Rep production, consistently entertaining,
though the script, by Angelo Parra, and the format aren't up to her performance.
It's 1937, the year of Bessie's death, and she's singing in a Memphis buffet flat,
a private establishment with food, drink, gambling and whatever else goes. (Michael
Schweikardt's set has the look of a lived-in parlor.)
Between songs -- "Downhearted Blues," "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out,"
"St. Louis Blues," "'T'aint Nobody's Business if I Do" -- she reminisces about her
life and loves and career, sometimes trading banter with Pickle (Jim Hankins), the
bass player in her three-man band. And she has premonitions of the end. (Not the
script's best conceit: Each time she hears the word "death," it sends her reeling.)
It's hard to love that sing-and-talk (belt and blab?) format, because the talk often
feels forced and more expository than dramatic. The stories give you bits of what
you want -- biography, and musical and social history -- but just enough to sketch
in portraits of Smith and her era.
Ms. Braden's performance, though, fills in some of the missing pieces, and the music
mostly makes you forget the rest, with the band lending the proceedings an informal,
jazz club-type vibe. (The audience responds in kind.)
Whether grabbing her breasts for a quick jiggle to the beat or signaling the band
to stop with an elegantly commanding wave of the hand, Ms. Braden helps you understand
that even if Ma Rainey, her mentor, was the Mother of the Blues, Bessie was, after
all, as she says, the "Empress of the Blues, thank you very much."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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