[Dixielandjazz] Headstone for Mamie Smith

[Robert Ringwald]

Mamie Smith Gets Her Due at Last: Blues Pioneer's Headstone to Be Dedicated Saturday
on Staten Island
by Michael J. Fressola
Staten Island Advance, September 10, 2014
The long-unmarked Oakwood gravesite of chart-topping blues singer Mamie Smith (1883-1946)
will finally get a fondly inscribed headstone, thanks to the efforts of local fans.
The marker will be unveiled and dedicated Saturday, Sept. 13, in Frederick Douglass
Memorial Park, 3201 Amboy Road. Island-based singers Larry Marshall and Jeannine
Otis will perform at the 2 p.m. ceremony, and the public is welcome.
The campaign to identify Smith's final resting place began last year when Grasmere
music journalist Michael Cala stumbled upon a biographical entry about the singer,
whose 1920 record "Crazy Blues" broke the industry's race barrier, and shipped one
million copies.
The bio mentioned the unmarked gravesite. Cala visited the cemetery, consulted the
records and located the plot.
Afterwards, he launched a fundraising effort that culminated last July in a six-hour
concert last at Killmeyer's Old Bavaria Inn in Charleston. Proceeds covered the cost
of a marker and a maintenance fund,
The headstone honors Smith's convention-smashing contribution. "This is our way of
acknowledging how one woman threw open the doors," Cala said, adding, "Thousands
upon thousands of blues and jazz recordings that may never have been made without
Mamie."
Among her successors were Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson
and Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Smith continued touring and made other recordings but none were as big as "Crazy
Blues." Apparently, she was impoverished when she died in Harlem, her home for many
years, in 1946.
Coincidentally, Mamie Smith's near contemporary, Bessie Smith (1894-1935), considered
the greatest blues singer of the era, was also interred in an unmarked plot. An admirer,
blues/rock singer Janis Joplin (1943-1970), commissioned the stone that marks her
grave today in Sharon Hill, Pa.
-30

-Bob Ringwald
Bob Ringwald Solo Piano, duo, Trio, Quartet
Fulton Street Jazz Band
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