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Smith, Bessie,

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Bessie Smith was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by the age of nine, she sang on street corners before becoming a big name in travelling shows. In 1923 she made her first recording for a new start-up called Columbia Records. It sold 780,000 copies, making her a star. Smith's life was notoriously difficult: she drank pints of 'bathtub gin', got into violent fist fights, spent huge sums of money and had passionate love affairs with men and women. She once single-handedly fought off a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.As a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in Bessie someone with whom she could identify and who she could idolise. In this remarkable book Kay mixes biography, fiction, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life.

African American women singers --- Singers --- Blues (Music) --- Smith, Bessie,

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Smith, Bessie --- Singers --- United States --- Biography --- Jazz musicians --- 78.39.1

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Fonds Suzan Daniel (FSD)

Sociology of the family. Sociology of sexuality --- Sexology --- Music --- Smith, Bessie --- anno 1900-1999 --- Homosexuality --- Jazz --- Pop music --- Book

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From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith -- published here in their entirety for the first time -- Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a consciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph. -- Back cover.

Blues (Music) --- History and criticism --- Texts --- Feminism and music --- United States --- Women blues musicians --- Smith, Bessie --- Rainey, Ma --- African American women --- muziek --- muziekgeschiedenis --- Verenigde Staten --- Afro-Amerikanen --- Afro-Amerikaanse cultuur --- blues --- jazz --- vrouwen --- vrouwelijkheid --- feminisme --- seksualiteit --- 78 --- Afro-American women --- Women, African American --- Women, Negro --- Women --- Blues musicians --- Women musicians --- Music and feminism --- Music --- Rainey, Ma, --- Smith, Bessie, --- Holiday, Billie, --- Holliday, Billie, --- Fagan, Eleanora, --- Holiday, Eleanora, --- McKay, Eleanora, --- Holiday, Billy, --- Lady Day, --- Smith, Elizabeth, --- Rainey, Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett, --- Pridgett, Gertrude, --- Holiday, Billie --- anno 1900-1999 --- Empress of the Blues --- United States of America --- Pop music --- Singing --- Black feminism