[Dixielandjazz] Bessie Smith: The Complete Columbia Recordings (Sony/Legacy)

[Robert Ringwald]

Bessie Smith: The Complete Columbia Recordings (Sony/Legacy)
by Christopher Loudon
Jazz Times, January-February, 2013
Among blues royalty, Bessie Smith was known as the Empress and Dinah Washington the
Queen. But their titles should have been reversed, since Smith laid the groundwork
not just for Washington but for dozens of blues, jazz and soul singers, from Ella
Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday through Joe Williams, Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin.
(Holiday's recording career began, in the same studio with the same sidemen, three
days after Smith's ended.) To call her influence seismic is an understatement.
In her heyday throughout the 1920s, she was the most beloved -- and highest paid
-- black artist in America, comparable in popularity to Sinatra, Elvis or Michael
Jackson. And her pivotal importance extends well beyond the 12-bar blues that were
her specialty. The recording industry was in its infancy when Smith commenced making
records (her work actually pre-dates electric recording by a couple of years), and
her mastery at the microphone forever altered popular singing, establishing a more
intimate sound that Bing Crosby, Sinatra and Holiday perfected. And she expanded
the entire industry, opening up a lucrative market among black Americans. She might
have, as has been widely posited, even single-handedly saved her label, the then-fledgling
Columbia, from bankruptcy.
Remarkably, Smith, who died at age 43 as the result of injuries suffered from a car
accident in 1937, accomplished all of this in less than a decade. Between 1923 and
1931, she recorded 156 sides for Columbia. All were, together with four tracks done
for the Columbia subsidiary OKeh under the direction of John Hammond in 1933, assembled
in a series of five double-disc sets in the 1990s. This new 10-disc box is simply
a compact (and more affordable) repackaging of those earlier releases, complete with
the same bonus materials: soundtrack selections from Smith's sole film appearance,
playing herself in the 1929 short "St. Louis Blues," a handful of alternate takes
and a multi-part 72-minute interview between Smith biographer Chris Albertson and
Smith's niece Ruby.
Smith was already a seasoned performer when, accompanied solely by her mentor and
early champion, pianist and composer Clarence Williams, she first entered the studio
in February of '23, laying down the classic "Down-Hearted Blues." Honed from years
on the road (several in the company of mentor Ma Rainey), the ebony sound and strident
assurance that would define all her work was fully formed. Rarely did she require
more than a pianist for support, occasionally supplemented by cornet, trombone, sax
and/or guitar, and several giants -- Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Coleman
Hawkins and, most famously, Louis Armstrong, with whom she cut nine sides in 1925,
including their legendary rendition of "St. Louis Blues" -- numbered among her musical
partners. Once in a while, a more pop-oriented tune like "'Tain't Nobody's Bizness
If I Do" would creep into her repertoire, but the blues was her idiom, and she covered
all facets -- sad, saucy and funny -- with inimitable elan.
With the onset of the Great Depression, the blues (and Smith along with them) suffered
a sharp decline in popularity. But that 1933 session with Hammond, featuring Jack
Teagarden and Chu Berry, provides a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been,
suggesting that Smith might easily have achieved a major comeback and new vigor as
a swing singer if her life hadn't been cut so tragically short.
-30-


-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
916/ 806-9551

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