BESSIE SMITH: AN AMERICAN ICON FROM THREE PERSPECTIVES

Matthew Keeler

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

December 2005

Committee:

Steven Cornelius, Advisor

David Harnish ii

ABSTRACT

Steven Cornelius, Advisor

Bessie Smith: an American Icon from Three Perspectives examines biographies, literary studies, and black feminist writings about the quintessential blueswoman of the 1920s American recording industry. Problems have arisen from each group of scholars interpreting Smith’s contributions and importance to American culture differently, often at the expense of someone else’s viewpoint.

Historically, biographers tried to dispel myths in order to determine the true events of

Smith’s life, but dismissed the necessity of myth in shaping her legacy. Literary scholars analyzed Smith’s lyrics for deeper social meanings and contributions to literature, but overlooked her role as a performer. Black feminists acknowledged Smith as a model for strong

African-American womanhood among the urban working-class, but neglected her innovations as a musician. All of these perspectives contribute to our overall understanding of Smith, but possess fundamental flaws.

I have examined nearly fifty years of Bessie Smith scholarship, considering the socio- cultural backgrounds, time periods, genders, and research limitations of scholars representing these various groups. Ultimately, their biases compromise our understanding of Smith. To address this problem, future researchers need to look beyond individual histories to understand the reasoning and research processes that created them. iii

I dedicate this manuscript to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,

to my wife and best friend, Jennifer,

to my steadfast church and family, and in loving memory of Douglas Thayer, Maxine Wolfe, and Gus.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Steven Cornelius, my advisor, who devoted more time to this project than he had to give; I could not have finished it without his guidance, sincerity, and hard work. Also, thank

you to David Harnish for his keen eye and worthy criticism, both of which increased the

readability of this manuscript immensely. Finally, I extend my overwhelming gratitude to any

volunteers who offered their input to this project at one time or another (you know who you are).

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER II. BIOGRAPHICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF BESSIE SMITH...... 5

The Biographers...... 5

The Life of Bessie Smith: Paul Oliver, Chris Albertson, Elaine Feinstein...... 9

Conclusions...... 19

CHAPTER III. LITERARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF BESSIE SMITH...... 21

The Literary Scholars...... 21

Samuel Charters...... 22

Paul Garon...... 25

Mary Ellison...... 27

CHAPTER IV. BLACK FEMINIST UNDERSTANDINGS OF BESSIE SMITH...... 30

Black Feminist Interest in Blueswomen...... 31

Hazel Carby...... 36

Daphne Duvall Harrison...... 44

Angela Davis...... 47

Conclusions...... 53

CHAPTER V. CLOSING REMARKS...... 54

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 56 1

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION

Ethnomusicologists are interdisciplinary researchers who address a broad range of socio-cultural concerns through the study of music. Generally speaking, these scholars maintain that studying the context in which music takes place is more revealing than studying its sound forms.

This thesis looks neither at music as a sonic phenomenon, nor at music in its cultural context, but rather at a shared musical topic seen through the changing perspectives of scholars over time. By turning the lens towards the research itself, we see how ethnomusicologists and other scholars have historically valued music for different reasons. The vast majority of scholars do not study music to understand its musicality (how it has been written down, organized, or performed). Instead, they study the ideas people express through music, and how their expression has changed the world. Invariably, these scholars look through the lenses of their own particular interests and place in time.

For this project I have chosen to focus on blueswoman Bessie Smith, an icon of

American popular music since her untimely death in 1937. Her name is known to people of all social strata and walks of life (musicians as well as laymen). During the 1920s, when women’s public expression was often stifled, Smith expressed herself freely through music. She represented the concerns of black America, the urban working-class and women in general. She toured continuously, sang some of the first recorded blues, became the highest-paid performer of her generation, and influenced subsequent generations of musicians and vocalists.

I have chosen to analyze three groups of scholars—biographers, literary scholars, and black feminists—whose presentations of the singer differ considerably. I investigate the unique 2 qualities of each group’s scholarship as well as how these various perspectives offer us different understandings of Smith.

For those who value musicality, the omission of analysis and criticism of Smith’s music is significant; it shows a lack of concern for her vocal technique and its influence upon American music. Jeff Todd Titon was the only scholar I found who provided transcriptions of Smith’s melodies and commented on their musical attributes and, admittedly, he did this only to contrast them with country blues melodies.1 I, however, would contend that his comments about Smith’s

life, career, and audience reception are far more interesting and revealing than his transcriptions,

for they help to explain Smith’s impact on American society as a whole.

Although they are not ethnomusicologists, the researchers presented in this thesis can

inform ethnomusicologists about Smith. Ethnomusicologists long ago developed the habit of

borrowing from other disciplines. Early researchers of “exotic music” adopted physicist

Alexander Ellis’ cents system to quantifiably measure musical pitch across cultures. Béla

Bártok’s morphemic cataloguing of melodies was initially derived from linguists’ morphemic

classification of words. Steven Feld’s exploration of Kaluli mythology2 as it relates to music resembles a folklorist’s approach to studying culture. Timothy Rice adopted hermeneutics from theology and applied it to understanding Bulgarian music.3 Manuel Peña and Jane Sugarman,

when writing about Mexican-American tejano music4 and Albanian wedding music5 respectively, both included thorough historical research. When Margaret Kartomi wrote about

1 Jeff Todd Titon, Early Downhome Blues: a Musical and Cultural Analysis, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press; 1st ed., 1977), 104-107. 2 Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). 3 Timothy Rice, “Dancing in the World’s Scholar,” in May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 3-15. 4 Manuel Peña, The Mexican American Orquesta: Music, Culture, and the Dialect of Conflict (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999). 5 Jane Sugarman, Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 3

Minangkabau tiger-capturing songs,6 she discussed, as an anthropologist might, the ritual and method of catching tigers West Sumatran style. Mellonee Burnim needed to become a performing musician (a piano accompanist) at two different churches before she could conduct fieldwork on black gospel music there.7 The breadth of familiarity with other disciplines among

ethnomusicologists hints at the real nature of ethnomusicology—more than a discipline devoted

to understanding music, it is a collective of interdisciplinary researchers for whom music is meaningful.

The Bessie Smith scholarship covered in this study spans roughly fifty years. Smith’s biographers represent three decades: Paul Oliver (1959)8, Chris Albertson (1972),9 and Elaine

Feinstein (1985).10 The literary scholars’ dates are similar: Samuel Charters (1963),11 Paul

Garon (1975),12 and Mary Ellison (1989).13 Black feminist writing on Smith is more recent and its span, much more compact: Hazel Carby (1987),14 Daphne Duvall Harrison (1988),15 and

Angela Davis (1998).16

I have attempted to represent an equal number of male and female scholars; however,

since male biographers and literary scholars wrote first about Smith, they have provided the

foundational knowledge from which all later studies of Smith draw. Consequently, I grant them

6 Margaret Kartomi, “Tigers Into Kittens?” Hemisphere 12 (1979), 127-140. 7 Mellonee Burnim, The Black Gospel Music Tradition: Symbol of Ethnicity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). 8 Paul Oliver, Kings of Jazz: Bessie Smith, 2nd ed. (New York: Perpetua, 1961; 1st ed., 1959). 9 Chris Albertson, Bessie (New York: Stein and Day, 1972). 10 Elaine Feinstein, Bessie Smith: Empress of the Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 1985). 11 Samuel Charters, The Poetry of the Blues, 2nd ed. (New York: Avon, 1970; 1st ed., 1963). 12 Paul Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: City Lights, 1996; 1st ed., 1975). 13 Mary Ellison, Extensions of the Blues (New York: Riverrun Press, 1989). 14 Hazel Carby, “The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues” (1987) in Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America (New York: Verso, 1999). 15 Daphne Duvall Harrison, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1988). 16 Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998). 4 more space in the first two chapters. The black feminist chapter, however, is comprised entirely of women, hopefully making up for the lack of coverage elsewhere.

5

CHAPTER II.

BIOGRAPHICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF BESSIE SMITH

All studies of Bessie Smith are essentially historical, for she lived and worked nearly a century ago. Scholars, however, have presented her life in various ways, some of which appear elsewhere in this study: Angela Davis, in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998), examines

how Smith’s legacy has informed the cultural identity of African American women. Mary

Ellison, in Extensions of the Blues (1989), explores Smith’s influence upon modern American

poetry and fiction.

Both studies are intriguing, but neither focuses on the singer as the sole subject of study,

nor do they provide a complete chronological history of her life; these tasks—though there are significant disagreements in even fundamental details—have already been completed by her biographers. The overall purpose of this chapter is, therefore, to compare the primary biographical accounts of Smith’s life and, in the process, provide some fundamental knowledge about the woman herself.

The Biographers

Several factors initially prevented a biography of Smith from being written, economics for one.

The Chicago Defender, for example, offered the only substantial criticism of jazz and blues in

the 1920s, and its music writers were often musicians themselves, being paid by promoters to

create favorable reviews. Thus, opinions were often tailored to please the highest bidder, and the information provided was not reliable enough for use by potential biographers. 6

Chris Albertson states that the earliest jazz writers, mainly white audiophiles and enthusiasts, began appearing in the late 1930s.17 With so much ground to cover, these writers focused on either “the contemporary activities of the big swing bands or dealt in very general terms with the history and development of African American music.” If articles about Smith did appear, they generally rehashed earlier publications, offering only abbreviated and unreliable glimpses of the singer’s life.

It was not until the late 1940s that a biography was even attempted. Jazz critic Rudi

Blesh arranged for interviews with Smith’s husband, Jack Gee, and her sisters Tinnie and

Viola.18 Gee, however, demanded more money at the last minute, making the project

impossible. Another decade would pass before a full-length biography of Smith appeared—Paul

Oliver’s strangely titled Kings of Jazz: Bessie Smith (1959 [1961]).

Since Oliver’s work, Chris Albertson and Elaine Feinstein have also written Smith

biographies, not counting two biographies written for children. None of Smith’s primary

biographers (Oliver, Albertson, or Feinstein) claims a political or disciplinary agenda other than

his or her own presentation of history. Nevertheless, personal biases and individual research

constraints have influenced the writing.

Paul Oliver’s Kings of Jazz: Bessie Smith ([1959]1961) was the first detailed attempt at a

chronological history of Smith’s life. Although written closest to the singer’s death by proximity

of years, it offers the least personal information about her. Furthermore, it is wrought with

historical inaccuracies. Oliver relied heavily upon information provided by amateur research

enthusiasts (predominantly British), and generally did not validate their claims. He sometimes

recast legend as history, and printed information from popular media as fact.

17 Albertson, 9. 18 Ibid., 11. 7

There is no information to explain why Oliver did not conduct his own interviews.

Perhaps, in the process of meeting deadlines for the Kings of Jazz series, he was not able to devote enough time to finding good informants. For whatever reason, it appears that he never contacted anyone who actually knew Smith. What he did have, however, was access to

Columbia’s studio files and, through them, a reliable record of Smith’s recording sessions and her professional interactions with record executives such as Frank Walker, the head of

Columbia’s race records staff. Sadly, Chris Albertson, a decade later, tried to procure the files from Columbia only to discover that they had been destroyed.19 Oliver’s biography, therefore, is the only source with this type of information.

Oliver, like all writers, was influenced by the attitudes of his day. The biography reflects his own values as much as Smith’s. He criticized the bawdiness of Smith’s later repertoire, and prized the less explicit lyrics of her early Columbia recordings.

Chris Albertson’s heavily annotated Bessie (1972) is the most comprehensive of the three

Smith biographies. Albertson was dissatisfied with previous writers’ superficial treatment of the songstress; the whole of their effort could be summed up in ten or fifteen pages of print, he argued. Albertson contended that jazz historians had neglected to interview those closest to

Smith, instead relying upon star performers or studio executives to tell her story. In contrast,

Albertson sought out “the unknown chorine or stage hand who—having fewer distractions and a more intimate working relationship with [Smith]—were usually the most perceptive observers.”20 Recollections provided by close acquaintances of the singer became the backbone

of Albertson’s study, an approach that ultimately lends a personal touch to his writing.

19 Ibid., 12. 20 Ibid., 9-10. 8

Nevertheless, Eva Taylor (wife of Clarence Williams, Smith’s accompanist and arranger at Columbia) has questioned the reliability of Albertson’s primary informant, Ruby Walker:

. . . a lot of things in the book [Albertson, Bessie] . . . were untrue, because [he] . . . didn’t make a research on what the niece told [him]. [Smith] was an enemy of the niece, anyhow . . . because the niece was going with her husband. And anything terrible the niece could say about her she said.21

To clarify, “going with” does not signify a romantic relationship between Walker and Gee

(Walker was Gee’s niece), but to Walker’s frequent defense of her uncle when his relationship

with Smith became strained. Albertson never acknowledged the potential of this relationship to

color Walker’s viewpoint, but considered her stories an infallible glimpse into Smith’s character.

Albertson, like Oliver, represents the spirit of his time. His study was published shortly

after the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and seems to sympathize with Smith’s rejection of the

status quo. He freely discusses the singer’s drinking binges, bisexual love affairs, and fondness

for sex clubs. This bias may have supported his quick acceptance of Walker’s representation.

He is, however, sympathetic to Smith in most cases. Unlike Oliver, Albertson observes

no decline in Smith’s vocal abilities during the later years of her life. In a time of renewed

sensitivity toward alternative lifestyles, he was perhaps more willing than Oliver to embrace the

singer’s increasingly uninhibited singing style as an open expression of her personal and cultural

identity.

Elaine Feinstein’s succinct and readable Bessie Smith: Empress of the Blues (1985),

written in fulfillment of Penguin’s Lives of Modern Women series, was not designed to be a

comprehensive biography and offers little insight beyond Albertson. Frustrating to scholars is

the fact that there are no footnotes and only a brief bibliography. Still, there are points to

21 Harrison, 55. 9 recommend the book, particularly Feinstein’s focus on Smith’s struggle to maintain a balance between marriage and career, a feat few female singers of the time even attempted.

In summation, the major biographical accounts of Smith’s life were written by people striving to understand a culture considerably different than their own. Furthermore, the various social attitudes of the late 1950s, early 1970s, and early 1980s are reflected in Smith’s biographies. Expectations in Smith’s time were different from what the biographers knew and understood; the biographers, as early as Oliver, were making leaps in rationale to explain her behavior, which was largely foreign to them. Nevertheless, some concerns remained the same:

Feinstein, as a woman writing nearly half a century later, could relate to Smith’s struggles in a male-dominated society. With this in mind, the following section presents a short biographical narrative of Smith’s life compiled from the biographies. Discrepancies between authors are emphasized. Where no discrepancies appear, it should be assumed that the biographers agree.

The Life of Bessie Smith: Paul Oliver, Chris Albertson, Elaine Feinstein

Smith was born and raised in a Chattanooga slum. Life was difficult, illiteracy rampant, and jobs scarce. Politically, African Americans were invisible; few records exist concerning the most basic statistics. No birth certificates, for example, were ever found for Smith or her family. It is, therefore, not surprising that Oliver records Smith’s date of birth as April 15, 1898 and mentions her having four siblings, whereas both Albertson and Feinstein place her birth four years earlier, and recognize six children in the family.

Oliver describes Smith’s childhood as a musical one: She took part in school productions, won $8 in a singing contest, and sang with a choir in Memphis.22 Albertson and

Feinstein, however, refrain from including such detailed accounts of Smith’s childhood. There is

22 Oliver, 2-3. 10 good reason for their caution; details about this period in the singer’s life are difficult to verify.

The later biographers learned to approach the popular media sources of Smith’s day with a healthy degree of skepticism.

Albertson and Feinstein understood that Smith frequently attempted to reinvent her own past in interviews. For example, she told one interviewer from the Chicago Defender that she was once the state roller-skating champion of Tennessee. The claim was dubious, but the

Defender printed the story, as did Oliver in his 1959 biography.23 Albertson later contended that the roller skating story was most likely a ploy by Smith to toy with her interviewer (this falls in line with his understanding of the singer as a mischievous and occasionally anti-authoritarian figure).

All three biographers agree that Smith began singing on street corners around the age of nine, but slight discrepancies have arisen as to her exact introductions into vaudeville. Oliver, in keeping with popular belief, asserts that the Rabbit Foot Minstrels (led by “Ma” and “Pa”

Rainey) came to Chattanooga around 1910 and took Smith with them when they left, thereby introducing her to the professional music circuit.

Albertson and Feinstein, however, argue that Smith’s older brother, Clarence, arranged for her real break into show business via an audition with the Moses Stokes traveling show in

1912. Ironically, the Raineys happened to be touring with Stokes, which suggests that there is an element of truth to Oliver’s account.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the details of Oliver’s biography are unreliable.

Early on, for example, Oliver mentions that Smith sought to emulate a “relatively unknown vocalist” named “Caro” Fisher; Albertson, who tended to cross check his references, offers the more reliable account. He lists Cora Fisher as manager of the Stokes’ show, and not a performer.

23 Ibid., 2. 11

When Smith left the Raineys after a season, she began to tour the T.O.B.A. circuit

(Theater Owner’s Booking Association) appearing in traveling shows. Her early years on the

circuit, c.1910 -1923, are sketchy if not contradictory. The biographers typically found differing

data as they consulted the Chicago Defender. For example, Oliver contends Smith spent some

time on the gulf coast with Pete Werley’s Florida Cotton Pickers, whereas Albertson records her appearing with Pete Werley’s Florida Blossoms. This could be the same troupe or another group managed by the same person.

By 1922, Smith (by all accounts) had toured as far west as Muskogee, as far north as

Philadelphia, and as far east as Atlantic City, but still had no recording contract, probably because she was dark-skinned, and sang in a gritty, Southern style foreign to most Northern audiences. Prior to February1923, she auditioned for Black Swan, Okeh, and Emerson, but was turned down. That month, however, she acquired a contract with Columbia, and would soon become the top-selling recording artist of her day.

Biographers have debated the circumstances surrounding Columbia’s acquisition of

Smith. Oliver attests that Frank Walker, head of Columbia’s race records, was an experienced business man who knew what he wanted when he sent Clarence Williams, his assistant, to retrieve Smith from Philadelphia. Conversely, he portrays Williams as being skeptical of

Smith’s drawing power in light of other companies’ refusals to sign her.

Albertson diverges from Oliver, citing that Williams had brought Smith to New York for her audition with Okeh only a few weeks before, prompting the question “Who told whom about

Bessie Smith?” Williams likely reminded Walker about Smith, motivating him to send for the singer. In the end, though, Albertson suggests that Charlie Carson, a Philadelphia record shop owner, may have been most responsible; Carson reportedly called Williams up, convincing him 12 to renew his efforts to get the singer signed (i.e. Carson told Williams to remind Walker about

Smith).

Feinstein chooses the safest route of the three, contending that Walker sent Williams to retrieve Smith, end of story. She does not debate Walker’s motivations for doing this.

Furthermore, she does not question William’s faith in Smith’s drawing power. She merely records the event.

What these contentions say about the authors personally is debatable. One could argue that Oliver fulfills his generation’s prejudices against African Americans by favoring the white record industry’s eye for talent. Conversely, it could be said that Albertson shows his relativistic favoritism towards African Americans by accrediting them with Smith’s “discovery.” Feinstein, however, chooses not to take sides, a position that is equally undesirable for different reasons, but perhaps reflects the overview nature of her biography.

Soon after her Columbia signing, Smith’s first recording, “Down-Hearted Blues,” sold nearly 750,000 copies. By comparison, Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” the only historical rival, barely passed 100,000 copies.

Oliver, through his access to Columbia’s files, verifies that Smith was making only $125 a side from Columbia when she started.24 She received no record royalties. By 1925, however, her fame had become so widespread that she was receiving $1,000 in advance for each recording, and five percent of record sales. The assured sales of 100,000 copies or more within a

week of release made this arrangement possible.

Oliver mentions that Smith recorded with music legends such as Louis Armstrong,

Sidney Bechet, and Fletcher Henderson, and can provide a time table down to the date of each

24 This would, ironically, be her closing rate with Columbia after a decade of being the highest paid African American performer of her generation. 13 take. Oliver offers, for example, the following information about tenor sax legend Coleman

Hawkins in the studio:

A young saxophonist named Coleman Hawkins had been playing in Mamie Smith’s band and now he had an opportunity with Bessie Smith. Apparently his playing was not considered good enough, for he accompanied her on the first two ‘takes’ of “Any Woman’s Blues” when they met on October 16th, and was dropped for the final, accepted one.25

Lesser-known musicians, such as trombonist Charlie Green and fiddler Bob Robbins, also appear

in Oliver’s account of the sessions. Oliver’s biography, in this way, provides an overview of

working musicians that would prove beneficial, not only to Smith’s researchers, but to any

scholar studying the “Jazz Age.”

Shortly before her success at Columbia, Smith began dating a night watchman named

Jack Gee. The two were living together in Philadelphia when Columbia accepted her. Soon

after signing the contract, Smith and Gee married (April 7, 1923). Oliver provides little

information about Smith’s married life, whereas Albertson provides a great deal, but disperses it

sporadically throughout his biography. Comparatively, Feinstein emphasizes the marriage for

nearly seven of her twelve chapters.

Like other biographers, Feinstein provides the following: Gee, upon realizing the success

of his wife’s first summer tour, quit his job and redirected his energies towards her career. He

managed her finances and policed the behavior of her troupe on the road. All artistic decisions

were left up to Smith.

Biographers tend to agree on the historical facts of Smith’s marriage to Gee. The

differences are a matter of emphasis: In the fall of 1925 the singer took a brief break from

touring. Oliver discusses only the recordings she made at this time, and not her family life.

25 Oliver, 23-24. 14

Albertson grants a paragraph to family and, like Oliver, claims that the vacation primarily offered Smith a chance to record.26 Feinstein, however, contends it was “the closest [Smith] came to living an ordinary domestic life,” and devotes more than a chapter to understanding it.

Conversely, she rarely mentions Columbia or the music business during this section.27 The amount of space each author designates for discussing family reveals, of course, the degree of importance they place upon Smith’s personal life. It may also reflect later writers’ focus on filling in gaps left by earlier narratives.

Feinstein records developments in Smith’s personal life that took place during her

“sabbatical” from the road.28 Smith bought a house in Philadelphia for her sisters and their

children, and put her own newly adopted son, Jack Gee, Jr., into their care. That season she

showered them with gifts and affection, spending nearly $16,000 total on her family.

Smith’s eldest sister Viola, the matriarch of the family, now depended on the singer’s

money to pay the bills. Smith, therefore, started depositing her earnings into an account under

Viola’s name. Rather than granting Gee joint access to this account, she required him to request

money from Viola whenever he needed it. This arrangement bred a great deal of animosity

between husband and wife and ultimately contributed to the decline of their marriage.

Feinstein also mentions Smith’s efforts to fix the marriage: She bought a restaurant for

Viola in an attempt to make her more financially independent. She briefly quit touring to take

care of her husband, who was hospitalized in Hot Springs, Alabama, after a series of nervous

breakdowns. When he returned to health, she provided him with seed money to produce his own

touring show and, hopefully, empower him. Ultimately though, none of these attempts

prevented the eventual divorce, which came in 1930.

26 Albertson, 105. 27 Feinstein, 57. 28 Ibid.; 55-56, 57-59. 15

No other biography emphasizes the importance of Smith’s personal relationships. The fact that Feinstein provides such information raises the alternative historical perspectives women’s studies can offer.

The years immediately following Smith’s separation from Gee were eventful, though not always favorable. She was released from her contract by Columbia, suffered a decline in popularity, and lost many prospective bookings as the T.O.B.A. circuit folded. Her circumstances, however, were not all bad. She remarried to a Chicago bootlegger named

Richard Morgan, who provided her personal happiness and financial stability during the otherwise calamitous period of the Great Depression. Oliver portrays this time in a relatively negative light, stating:

In 1930 Bessie Smith was only thirty-two years of age, but like a professional boxer she had put the best years of her life behind her. Unlike a boxer, however, she could not accept the fact and she had not budgeted for a decline in her powers or her popularity. Unable to counter the change in popular taste or to meet the devastating effects of the Depression on the entertainment industry, she was left in severe financial straights.29

Oliver goes on to argue that Smith’s vocal talents were hampered by years of excess. He also

contends that she was reduced to selling concessions in movie theaters, and when performance

opportunities arose they often led nowhere, providing her with little acclaim. Albertson is more

optimistic, and counters many of Oliver’s claims directly:

It has been said that Bessie was “selling chewing gum and candy in theatre aisles,” but there is no truth to the story. Her fees were low . . . but Richard Morgan’s business continued to thrive . . . and Bessie Smith’s voice remained the best in the land. The legion of Bessie Smith fans was still strong, and there was always some place for her to display her talent.30

29 Oliver, 63. 30 Albertson, 180. 16

Albertson admits that many of the reviewers still regarded Smith as a throwback to the twenties.

Nevertheless, in his own writing he includes mostly favorable reviews supporting the argument

that Smith had made the transition into Swing music. To the people who had a chance to see her

perform in the last two years of her life, she was no longer merely the “Queen of the Blues.” Her

sound, attire, and dancing were all changing. Albertson finds Smith, in February 1936, filling in

for Billie Holiday at Connie’s Inn:31

Connie’s Inn brought Bessie a whole new audience, and what they heard was a new Bessie Smith; gone were the blues—except for an occasional request—and that powerful voice belted out the popular songs of the day with . . . ‘modern’ swing [accompaniment].32

If Smith sounds less convincing on a few of her last recordings, Albertson, rather than assuming

her voice was in a state of overall decline, provides possible reasons why. Some of her last

recordings for Columbia, for example, such as “Safety Mama” and “Need a Little Sugar in my

Bowl” (November 30, 1931) came during the third year of the Depression, when the company

began reducing the number of record pressings it made for its artists and declined to press some

recordings altogether. Albertson argues that Smith had no reason to believe her recordings

would be released and, for that reason, may not have been fully dedicated to those particular

sessions.33 This falls in line with many of Albertson’s later chapters, which are largely a defense

of Smith’s artistry and drawing power during a period of perceived decline. Therein, he

mentions signs of success on the horizon, including Broadway appearances, movie deals, and

scheduled recording sessions.

31 The highly revered young singer had come down with food poisoning. 32 Albertson, 199. 33 Ibid., 180. 17

Feinstein, for the most part, refrains from discussing the 1930s. She mentions the final

Columbia recordings and ends her account of Smith’s professional life in 1933. Although her record of Smith’s relationship with Gee is lengthy, she devotes considerably less attention to

Richard Morgan. She offers, instead, an apology that he was a quiet man and, therefore, little was known about him. This claim is nullified, however, by the fact that Albertson, more than a decade before, had provided a great deal of information about Richard Morgan.

A far more likely reason for Feinstein’s omission is that any discussion of the singer’s character in the later years of her life might have contradicted Feinstein’s concept of Smith as a legendary woman of strength and rebellion, a representation befitting the series she wrote for,

Lives of Modern Women. In an effort to honor the icon, however, she fails to capture Smith as a changing, fluid human being who grew wiser and less reckless with age (Albertson addresses this).

Bessie Smith’s death remains ambiguous, a striking irony considering that it generally receives more attention than her life. The violent car accident on Route 61 near Clarksdale,

Mississippi, was a tragedy in itself. In the early hours of the morning Smith and Richard Morgan were on their way South for a tour engagement, when a delivery truck for the National Biscuit

Company suddenly appeared, covering half of the narrow highway (the driver had stopped for a moment). Morgan swerved, but not in time to prevent sideswiping the passenger side. Smith had been asleep with her arm hanging partially out of the window. The arm was nearly severed at the elbow. Smith also sustained lethal head and torso injuries. The well-known controversy arose regarding whether she was refused treatment at a white hospital and, consequently bled to death on route to a “colored” facility. 18

The press, other than the Chicago Defender, printed little about Smith during her lifetime, but propagated a great deal of misinformation when she died. A month after the accident, John

Hammond published an inflammatory article in Down Beat magazine entitled, “Did Bessie

Smith Bleed to Death While Waiting for Medical Aid?” It perpetuated a cycle of rumors,

blurring the line between fact and fiction to this day.

The biographers each dealt with the inconsistencies of Smith’s death in their own way.

Oliver presented a concise account, less than a paragraph long, and did not address any contradictions. Albertson, the most thorough of the biographers, compares the accounts of Dr.

William Smith, the first responder to the scene, and Jack Gee, Jr., Bessie’s adopted son (who rendered Richard Morgan’s side of the story). Unlike the other biographers, Feinstein slightly romanticizes Smith’s death, beginning “Death was waiting for Bessie on Route 61 south of

Memphis at three o’ clock on a Sunday morning...,” however she, like Albertson, considers the conflicting reports.

Oliver writes mainly from Dr. Smith’s perception of the accident, as recorded in magazine and newspaper articles. He dismisses all other accounts as race-driven propaganda, and does not discuss them in detail. Like his rendition of Smith’s acceptance to Columbia, this approach favors the white participants’ version of the story.

Albertson provides Dr. Smith’s account of caring for the singer on the spot, and seeing that she was taken to the hospital, but pares it with Jack Gee, Jr.’s claim that Dr. Smith did not want to sully his car with Bessie’s blood and, therefore, delayed her arrival. There is little merit to the second claim, for shortly after Dr. Smith’s arrival at the scene his car was struck by another car, making it unusable. By acknowledging this, Albertson’s seems to favor Dr. Smith’s version of the story, granting it more space. The fact that he even considers Jack Gee, Jr. 19 account, however, is revealing, for it is full of inconsistencies; Albertson’s culturally relativistic favoring of the African American perspective perhaps enters his writing once again. Feinstein merely reiterates Albertson’s coverage.

Conclusions

The various renditions of Bessie Smith’s history have been shaped by how biographer’s

perceptions of information. Their research, like all research, represents a decision making

process to determine which data should be included or left out. Oliver typified the British

perspective of African Americans during a period of clean sophistication in the 1950s, and wrote

to create the first biography of Bessie Smith (something that had not been done before);

Albertson, an Icelandic/Danish expatriate to America, wrote shortly after the cultural and civil

rights upheaval of the 1960s—he was trying to revise the known history of Smith, which he perceived as compromised; Feinstein was a Jewish woman from Great Britain and a feminist poet and fiction writer working to contribute to a series of women’s studies during the mid-

1980s. The biographers’ needs and backgrounds ultimately changed how they presented Bessie

Smith.

The research constraints faced by each biographer also impacted how Smith was presented. Oliver worked from other people’s research and without interviews. Therefore, he was rarely in a position to understand the misinformation perpetuated about Smith. He did, however, have access to an early source, the Columbia Studio files, which disappeared before later biographers could access them.

Albertson used Oliver’s biography, the Chicago Defender, and most importantly, interviews with people who knew Smith, but had never been heard before. These sources 20 allowed him to see the discrepancies in Smith’s history. By using eyewitness testimony, he could weed out some of the deceptive information. His greatest obstacle was in choosing whether or not to trust the people he interviewed. If any errors were made in his research, this is

where they occurred.

By the time Feinstein undertook her study, more reliable synopses of African American

music history existed. She could evaluate full-length biographies of Smith, and achieve a well-

rounded understanding of the singer without conducting any interviews (by this time the nearest

eye-witnesses to Smith’s history were dead, anyway). Her work is cursory in many respects and

contains significant omissions (such as Smith’s later years). Due to her unique perspective as a woman, however, she may have better understood the role Smith played in marriage and in contention with everyday patriarchal prejudices. Albertson and Oliver could not offer this.

21

CHAPTER III.

LITERARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF BESSIE SMITH

Biographers and black feminists have studied Smith through a variety of parameters, including lyrics, performance presentation, and social context. Ethnomusicologists have added purely musical concerns (Titon’s analyses of Smith’s melodies, for example).34 Some scholars,

however, have focused almost exclusively on Smith’s lyrics, searching for symbolic imagery,

culturally-implicit meanings, and her influence on literature in general.

The scholars LeRoi Jones, Larry Neal, and Sherley Williams argue vigorously that the blues, with its incisive language and bracing imagery, constitutes an important and uniquely

American poetic art form.35 This is also the position of Samuel Charters, Paul Garon, and Mary

Ellison, the scholars featured here. The purpose of this chapter is not to argue the relative merits or failing of the blues as an art form, but rather to acknowledge the medium’s power and attempt

to understand through the work of these scholars how their approach affects the broader understanding of Smith and her music.

The Literary Scholars

Samuel Charters, a musician and writer prominent during the 1960s New York City folk revival

performed in the same Greenwich Village circles as Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, Jim Kweskin,

Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and others. He also recorded and documented older blues musicians of the

revival, including Lightnin’ Hopkins. Charters’ Country Blues (1959) was a product of these

34 Titon, 104-107. 35 LeRoi Jones, Blues People (New York: Morrow, 1963), 50; Larry Neal, “Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation,” in Woodie King and Earl Anthony, eds., Black Poets and Prophets: The Theory, Practice and Esthetics of Pan-Africanist Revolution (New York: Mentor, 1972), 151-152; Sherley Williams “The Blues Roots of Contemporary Afro-American Poetry” in Michael Harper and Robert B. Stepto, eds., Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art and Scholarship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 123. 22 efforts. In The Poetry of the Blues (1963), Charters studied African Americans’ compromised social standing as reflected in blues lyrics, an art form he vigorously defended for its poetic vitality. Though arguably dated, Charter’s work provides a historical precedent for anyone interested in exploring the intellectual climate of the folk revival. Other studies from this period, most notably those by Paul Oliver and LeRoi Jones, possess similar foci and agendas.

Later scholars would carry the blues torch as well. One such person was record collector and blues enthusiast Paul Garon, who published Blues and the Poetic Spirit (1975), a psychological study of blues lyrics as poetry. Like many scholars of the era, Garon expressed an interest in Freudian psychology. Even so, Blues and the Poetic Spirit remains a rare exploration of surrealistic imagery in the blues. Another British scholar and enthusiast of African American culture was Mary Ellison, who contributed Extensions of the Blues (1989), with two chapters—

“The Blues in American Poetry” and “Blues in American Fiction”—documenting the appearance of blues idioms in American poetry and fiction.36

Samuel Charters

In The Poetry of the Blues, Charters notes that blues lyrics often use “poetic devices”—such as

simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, and metonymy—in a manner characteristic of “the

English poetic tradition.”37 More importantly, however, he argues that blues lyrics, although

simple in form and rhyme scheme, possess a “strength and vitality” of “imagery and expression”

indicative of great poetry.38

36 Ellison, like Oliver and Feinstein, is yet another example of a British writer interested in the development of American music and culture. 37 Charters, 43. 38 Ibid., 11. 23

Why the stress on greatness? It’s tempting to theorize that Charters, writing as he was during the height of the Civil Rights Era (also the time during which jazz and blues studies were just beginning to emerge), was trying to wedge the blues inside the ivy-covered doors of the academy by heralding the genre’s importance relative to that of works by long generations of

European wordsmiths. If so, however, the approach seems upside down. After all, the blues’ strength lies in its direct and earthy metaphors of sexuality and class-inflicted suffering. That is, the blues is powerful not because it meets old Western standards, but because it confronts its listeners with altogether new ones.

At any rate, Charters’ scholarship is uneven: occasionally insightful, often myopic.

Consider his focus on symbolism, sometimes marginalized by blues scholars in pursuit of more quantifiable data. Prior to discussing Smith’s “Long Old Road,” Charters establishes that in the blues tradition a given symbol’s meaning can change over the course of a song.39 He initially considers the “friend” in “Long Old Road” to be God,40

It’s a long old road, but I’m gonna find the end. (2x) And when I get there I’m gonna shake hands with a friend.

He discovers, however, that later verses fail to corroborate this:

On the side of the road, I sat underneath the tree. (2x) Nobody knows the thoughts that come over me.

Weepin’ and cryin’ tears falling on the ground. (2x) When I got to the end I was so worried down.

Picked up my bag, baby, and I tried it again. (2x) I got to make it, I’ve got to find the end.

39 Ibid., 52-53. 40 Ibid., 53. 24

In light of the narrator’s momentary breakdown and renewed resolve to press onward, Charters

rethinks the journey as symbolizing earthly trials, not those faced by a pilgrim seeking heaven.

His perspective, however, changes again after the final verse.

You can’t trust nobody, you might as well be alone. (2x) Found my long lost friend and I might as well stayed at home.41

Here, Charters argues that all “poetic intent” is seemingly stripped, and that the narrator was

potentially describing a literal walk with suitcase in tow all along. Charters’ perceptions of the song are generally agreeable, but he fails to consider that all three—spiritual journey, life crisis, and physical walk—might be occurring simultaneously, in which case the song’s symbolism is consistent throughout and all three are one in the same.

Elsewhere, Charters writes about the blues as a reflection of daily life, a recognition that

would be mirrored in later scholarship. He uses Smith’s “Washerwoman Blues”42 to elucidate everyday African American struggles:

Sorry I do washing just to make my livelihood. (x2) Oh the washwoman’s life it ain’t a bit of good.

Rather be a scullion, cooking in some white folks’ yard. (x2) I could eat up plenty, wouldn’t have to work so hard.43

In the broader context of this section, Charters has already argued

There is little protest in the blues . . . protest has been stifled . . . [by] the oppressive weight of prejudice . . . The white Americans who think of themselves as liberals . . . have, to some extent, overcome much of their own prejudice, but they forget that the

41 Bessie Smith, The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4, Sony 52838, 1993. 42 Charters, 166. 43 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 4. 25

Negro still faces a hostile wall of hate and distrust . . . If he protests, his job, his home, his family, and even his life, are at the mercy of his white neighbors.44

Not surprisingly, in reference to “Washerwoman blues,” he declares the narrator’s sufferings

typical of “the drudgery of the laboring jobs that are often the best a Negro can hope for,”45 but rather than labeling her plaint a metonym for the entire race’s suffering, he sees it more as an expression of personal dissatisfaction: preference for cooking over washing. He admits that being a cook is also hard work,46 but does not discuss it as means for taking advantage of the

employer (eating their food). That would be indicative of protest. Therefore, like many of his contemporaries, Charters fails to recognize the power of the blues as a cultural rebellion, a position contemporary scholars hold nearly invariably.

Paul Garon

Garon’s perceptions of the blues are, in some respects, contrary to Charters’. In Blues and the

Poetic Spirit (1975), he criticizes Peter Guralnick’s denial of the blues as a form of protest:47

To insist that it is a “vast misconception” to think of the blues as “protest music” because, after all, “Most blues unfortunately don’t even deal with the subject,” is not only to ignore latent content and human desire, but to perpetuate the dangerous ideology that it is only through “realism” (“socialist” or otherwise) that human desires find their most exalted expression. Revolt runs a deeper and more powerful course . . .48

Garon argues that blues artists challenge the status quo discreetly, using desire and the human

need for freedom to ultimately overcome prevailing mores.49 More specifically, he contends that

44 Charters, 152-154. 45 Ibid., 165. 46 Ibid., 152-154. 47 Peter Guralnick, Feel Like Going Home (New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971), 22-23. 48 Garon, 54. 49 Ibid., 54-55. 26 they accomplish this by destroying the ideological limitations normally placed on language.

Implicit to Garon’s argument is the idea that poetry is a language befitting special circumstances.

Poetry presents ideas artistically, thereby granting them elevated importance. Garon asserts that great poetry accomplishes this through “convulsive images, images of the fantastic and the marvelous, [and] images of desire.”50 He then extends this assessment to the imagery of the blues, arguing that such usage makes for great and authentic poetry. In this case, Garon’s observations build directly from Charters’.

Garon, however, considers the blues in Freudian terms. He recognizes in Smith’s lyrics

the power to conceivably awaken an audience’s subconscious desires. Listeners will not

necessarily act upon these desires, but their fantasies are nevertheless aroused by her music. For

example, Garon finds “eros” (lust) in “Empty Bed Blues:”51

Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find. (x2) So he could grind my coffee, ‘cause he had a brand new grind.

He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong (x2) He can touch the bottom, and his wind holds out so long

He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot (x2) Then he put in the bacon and overflowed the pot.52

Similarly, he argues that Smith’s “Black Mountain Blues” awakens subconscious criminal

desires:53

Back in Black Mountain a child will smack your face. (x2) Babies crying for liquor, and all the birds sing bass.

Black Mountain people are bad as they can be. (x2)

50 Ibid., 6-7. 51 Ibid., 60. 52 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 4. 53 Garon, 149. 27

They uses gunpowder just to sweeten their tea.

On the Black Mountain, can’t keep a man in jail. (x2) If the jury find him guilty, the judge will go his bail.

Had a man in Black Mountain, sweetest man in town. (x2) He met a city gal, and he throwed me down.

I’m bound for Black Mountain, me and my razor and my gun. (x2) I’m going to shoot him if he stands still and cut him if he runs.

Down in Black Mountain, they all shoot quick and straight. (x2) A bullet will get you if you start to dodging too late.

Got the devil in my soul, and I’m full of bad booze. (x2) I’m out here for trouble, I’ve got the Black Mountain Blues.54

Garon compares Smith’s use of imagery to the surrealists’ approach, citing surrealist philosopher

Nicolas Calas’ claim55 that surrealism is only “shocking for the people who are shocked by

dreams.”56 For Garon, Smith was a social radical who used poetic imagery to make thinly veiled

protests against prevailing social mores.

Mary Ellison

In Extensions of the Blues, Mary Ellison expands upon Charters’ and Garon’s perceptions by

tracking Smith’s influence upon poets, fiction writers, and literary critics. In her chapter, the

“Blues in American Poetry,” she sides with Larry Neal’s contention57 that the blues are an early form of African American poetry and, therefore, agrees with Charters’ general perception of the blues as poetry. Furthermore, she supports Garon’s contention that blues imagery deals directly with the psyche and “the most basic human desires and needs.” Like him, she presents Smith’s

54 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 4. 55 Nicholas Calas, “The Meaning of Surrealism: an Interview,” New Directions 1940 (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1940), 391. 56 Garon, 58. 57 Neal, “Any Day Now,” 151-155. 28

“Empty Bed Blues” and acknowledges its poetic-sexual symbolism.58 In addition, she compiles

a number of references to Smith made by poets. I include four examples, one each by Oliver

Pitcher and Bob Kaufman, and two by Eugene Perkins:59

I salute the brothers of charity who let Bessie Smith bleed to death. She had the wrong blood type. It wasn’t white.60

Ray Charles is the black wind of Kilimanjaro, Screaming up-and-down blues, Moaning happy on all the elevators of my time . . .

He burst from Bessie’s crushed black skull One cold night outside of Nashville, shouting, And grows bluer from memory, growing bluer, still61

Soul is Bessie Smith shouting the blues in a jim crow hospital.62

The heart of the Black ghetto Beating, beating, beating while the melancholy voices of Bessie Smith, Lady Day and Dinah Washington bring back odious memories of black bodies hanging from blood splattered trees.63

58 Ellison, 108-109. 59 Ibid., 127-129. 60 Rosey E. Pool, Beyond the Blues: New Poems by American Negroes (Lympne, Kent: Hand & Flower Press, 1962), 160-161. 61 Bob Kaufman, Solitudes: Crowded with Loneliness (New York: New Directions, 1965), 20. 62 Eugene Perkins, Black is Beautiful (Chicago: Free Black Press, 1968), 20. 63 Ibid., 20. 29

By presenting poetry about Smith, Ellison evidences Smith’s impact on literature. In poetry, writers have used the legendary blueswoman as a symbol of martyrdom, racial pride, and African

American heritage.

Ellison’s next chapter, “The Blues in American Fiction,” explores the ways in which writers understand their own development in relation to the blues. In the following paragraph

Ellison discusses the youthful experiences of Ralph Ellison, author of The Invisible Man (1953):

Ellison was trained as a classical composer at Tuskeegee and music was central to his life. Throughout his youth in his Oklahoma home he was surrounded by the blues and blues-based jazz. He grew up listening to the great classic blues singers like Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Clara Smith and the inimitable Bessie Smith and came to feel that the blues captured the essence of ‘human situations so well that a whole corps of writers could not exhaust their universality.’64

She also discusses Smith’s importance to James Baldwin, author of Sonny’s Blues (1948) and Go

Tell It On the Mountain (1953). She provides his testimony:

Bessie Smith . . . helped me to dig back to the way I myself must have spoken when I was pickaninny, and to remember the things I had heard and seen and felt. I had buried them very deep. I had never listened to Bessie Smith in America (in the same way that, for years, I would not touch watermelon) but in Europe she helped to reconcile me to being a ‘nigger.’65

Ralph Ellison refers to the “human situations” Smith expressed; Baldwin, to her searing

forthrightness in regards to race. In Extensions, they are portrayed as celebrators of Smith’s life,

quite different from the poets who glorified her martyrdom. Nevertheless, all of these writers,

Ellison argues, valued Smith for her unique ability to express the African American experience,

not simply because she was a great singer (although this undoubtedly contributed to their

admiration).

64 Ellison., 177. 65 Ibid., 186. 30

CHAPTER IV.

BLACK FEMINIST UNDERSTANDINGS OF BESSIE SMITH

Hazel Carby, professor of African-American studies at Yale University, contends that the historic blues women of the 1920s became “part of a larger history . . . of African-American culture within the North American culture industry.66 Daphne Duvall Harrison, an independent

African-American writer, asserts that studying early blues women enables one to better

understand “the role of black women in the creation and development of American popular

culture.”67 Angela Davis, a foundational figure in the modern black feminist movement, presents

three legendary performers in a way “most concerned with how women’s performances appear

through the prism of the present.”68

These scholars, as black feminists, share a unique understanding of blueswomen. They

recognize blueswomen’s significance to popular music, but also consider them icons of African

American racial heritage, working-class solidarity, and strong womanhood. They differentiate blueswomen from other performers, namely bluesmen and white musicians from other genres.

Finally, they consider blueswomen foundational to modern black feminism.

Bessie Smith resonates well with black feminists, who have written more about her than

any other performer of the era. Carby, in the earliest black feminist article on blueswomen,

examines Smith’s “In House Blues.” Harrison discusses Smith’s friendship with Ma Rainey as

an example of blueswomen’s solidarity in a competitive industry. Davis portrays Smith as one

of a handful of performers who successfully represented the overall ethos of blueswomen. For

black feminists, Smith encapsulates what it meant to be a blueswoman in the 1920s. She was a

spokeswoman for her generation, and has become a symbol of black feminist ideals.

66 Carby, “Sexual Politics,” 7. 67 Harrison, 10. 68 Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, xi. 31

This chapter explores the relationship between Smith, 1920s blueswomen, and present- day black feminists. It offers a broad summary of relevant works contributed by the three

scholars above and analyzes their critique of female blues culture.

Black Feminist Interest in Blueswomen

During the 1920s, working-class African American women had relatively no voice in literate culture; few scholars championed their concerns. Although many women contributed to the

Harlem Renaissance—anthropologists such as Zora Neale Hurston and fiction writers such as

Jessie Faucet and Nella Larsen—Smith’s importance to African American womanhood was not acknowledged in writing for many decades.

In addition to the patriarchal prejudices evident in the American educational system, class discrimination on the part of the black bourgeoisie prevented blueswomen from being addressed in the period’s scholarship. Had blueswomen represented progress toward bourgeoisie ideals— material wealth, eloquent speech, and sophistication—their contributions might have received more praise from black intellectuals. With the notable exception of Langston Hughes, this was not the case.

Why not? Because blues performers arguably made their greatest contributions through bawdy songs in rough saloons and waterfront nightclubs. Many blueswomen lacked the social graces demanded by high society and the well-educated.

Black Nationalism, of course, attracted widespread support during the 1960s and fervor for feminism and black feminism soon followed. An increasingly literate African American population was largely responsible for reforming academic perceptions of African Americans.

The first widely recognized African American study of black music, Leroi Jones’ Blues People, 32 was published in 1962. A similar critique of blueswomen would not appear for more than twenty years.

Many African American women initially allied themselves with the broader feminist movement, but soon realized that white women’s concerns were usually granted higher priority in feminist circles. The issues important to African American women, such as the urban family structure and inner-city living conditions, were typically misunderstood or altogether ignored by whites. Consequently, many African America women decided that any constructive intervention on their behalf could only take place in a separate forum. Thus, black feminism began as a reaction to the broader feminist movement.69

By the early 1980s, a substantial body of black feminist theory became available, and new models for independent womanhood were being considered. This attracted attention from educated black women throughout the developed world, who started to examine the history of their oppression and rebellion. This was, in many ways, the cultural emergence of black feminist thought from around the world. In the context of concern for class-oriented politics, Smith and other blueswomen became socially relevant and, consequently, of great interest to black feminists.

In 1982, Hazel Carby, a British scholar of mixed Welsh and Jamaican parentage, immigrated to the United States and became an active participant in the American black feminist movement.70 Carby considered herself an “aggressively feminist Brit”71 who, like most black feminist scholars, initially focused almost exclusively on the “African American literate culture” and its ideas. Five years after moving to the United States, however, she published the essay,

69 Carby, “Sexual Politics,” 7. 70 Carby is now the Chair of African American Studies at Yale University. 71 Carby, Cultures in Babylon, 1. 33

“The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues,”72 addressing the role of working-class African

American women as “culture producers and performers in the 1920s.”73 With “Sexual Politics,” her interests shifted increasingly towards working-class women, who, without higher education,

had somehow achieved a prominent voice in society.

Carby analyzes blues lyrics in the manner of a literary scholar and, therefore, her

musicological insight is often lacking; however, she addresses blueswomen’s lyrics in relation to

their recorded performances. For example, she cites Smith’s “In House Blues,” claiming “the

way in which Bessie growls “so weak” contradicts the supposed weakness and helplessness of

the woman . . . and grants authority to her thoughts of ‘murder.’”74

Overall, Carby’s “Sexual Politics” includes two analyses of Smith’s lyrics, which she

bolsters with discussion of 1930s blues culture. 75 Similarly, in another article, “Policing the

Black Woman’s Body in an Urban Context,”76 she addresses how various groups of people— middle-class African Americans, as well as the white elite—have neglected or misrepresented working-class African American women in popular fiction. Observations about the cultural interplay between the music scene and the world around it are evident throughout her work.

Soon after “Sexual Politics,” Daphne Duvall Harrison published Black Pearls: Blues

Queens of the 1920s (1988). Carby passively critiqued it as a “general survey of a number of

singers and some of their lyrics.”77 Admittedly, Harrison did not pursue black feminist theory as aggressively as Carby; however, she presented the history and culture of 1920s blueswomen in detail.

72 Idem., “Sexual Politics,” 7-21. 73 Idem., Cultures in Babylon, 1. 74 Idem., “Sexual Politics,” 15. 75 See Carby, “Sexual Politics,” for more specific observations about “In House Blues” (15) and “Young Woman Blues” (18). 76 Carby, “Policing the Black Woman’s Body in an Urban Context,” in Cultures in Babylon, 22-39. 77 Idem., “They Put a Spell on You,” in Cultures in Babylon, 51. 34

In Black Pearls, Harrison covers not only legendary icons like Smith, but lesser known performers that eventually fell from public memory. She thoroughly explores the role race records and the T.O.B.A. (Theater Owner’s Booking Association) played in the blueswomen’s emergence. She acknowledges, as Carby did in “Sexual Politics,” that her writing favors “black women’s ideas and ideals from the standpoint of the working class and the poor.”78 Her study, however, is not an examination of how history changed the present; overall, she refrains from negotiating the relationship between modern black feminism and the historical blueswomen. She is instead concerned about the culture, industry, music, and politics of the 1920s.

Like Carby, Harrison studies blues women’s “poetry and performance.”79 She analyzes

blues lyrics and the impact they had in performance. Her critique occasionally encompasses

performance contexts, but is often limited to general cultural observations. Even so, Harrison neatly illustrates “[blueswomen’s] modes and means for coping successfully with gender-related discrimination and exploitation.”80 Furthermore, she strives to present “an emerging model for the working woman (in the 1920s)—one who [was] sexually independent, self-sufficient, creative, assertive, and trend-setting.”81 These concerns tie Harrison’s writing thematically to

black feminist concerns. Whether or not one considers Black Pearls an example of black

feminist scholarship, it has clearly informed and influenced black feminist thought.

In 1998, a decade after Black Pearls, Angela Davis published Blues Legacies and Black

Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. She periodically refers to the arguments made by Carby and Harrison, and bases many of her observations on their work.

Long before Blues Legacies, Davis made a name for herself as a political activist. Her personal

78 Harrison, 10. 79 Ibid., 10-11. 80Ibid., 10. 81Ibid., 10-11. 35 experiences with civil disobedience, social rebellion, and incarceration undoubtedly inform her perceptions of Bessie Smith. In many ways, both women are “larger-than-life” figures that have openly challenged the status quo.

Blues Legacies is a 427-page examination of three legendary performers—Ma Rainey,

Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday—and their impact upon popular culture and modern black feminist thought. Davis addresses themes of travel, relationships, protest, spirituality, self-consciousness,

social-consciousness, and the black aesthetic.

Her first chapter, “I Used to be Your Sweet Mama: Ideology, Sexuality, and

Domesticity,” in particular, is a methodological compromise between Carby’s “Sexual Politics”

and Harrison’s Black Pearls. It begins by tracking the changes in African American perceptions of men’s and women’s relationships from Emancipation through the 1920s. Like Harrison,

Davis devotes great detail to history, mapping the economic, social, and religious trends of

African Americans moving from the South to Northern urban areas. She then develops her arguments about sex and gender in ways similar to Carby—probing lyrics and recorded performances for nuances of meaning, and applying them to modern black feminist understandings.

Comparing the three scholars, several observations can be made: (1) on a global level, black feminists pursue the social advancement of women of African decent. This includes the recognition of their history, struggle, and liberation. Due to black feminism’s origination in the

United States, however, the issues facing African American women have generally received the most attention. (2) Initially, black feminists were primarily concerned with the literate culture of

African American women, but many have since branched off to emphasize urban, working-class concerns. (3) Bessie Smith and other blueswomen receive a great deal of attention from black 36 feminist scholars, mainly because they succeeded in creating a forum for working-class African

American women’s concerns before such an atmosphere existed in academia. In historical terms, women’s blues music offers a glimpse into the mindset of working-class African

American women during a time when their views and opinions were otherwise muted. Through black feminism Carby, Harrison, and Davis have contributed a unique critique of African

American music.

Hazel Carby

Carby built her career on promoting African American women’s struggles for social freedom

and, therefore, emphasizes the enduring themes of liberation expressed by blueswomen. She

discusses how blueswomen’s popular stature in the public sphere historically facilitated social

rebellion. She explains how blueswomen’s songwriting, selection of repertoire, wardrobe, and

behavior were used as tools in this rebellion. She demonstrates that Smith helped to create new

modes of social protest in popular culture and, by doing so, became a role model for

contemporaries and future listeners.

Carby interprets Smith’s “In the House Blues” as a protest against the expected domestic

roles imposed upon many working class African American women:82

Sitting in the house with everything on my mind. (2x) Looking at the clock and can’t even tell the time.

Walking to my window and looking outa my door. (2x) Wishin’ that my man would come home once more.

Can’t eat, can’t sleep, so weak I can’t walk my floor. (2x) Feel like calling “murder” let the police squad get me once more.

They woke me up before day with trouble on my mind. (2x)

82 Carby, “Sexual Politics,” 7-21. 37

Wringing my hands and screaming, walking the floor hollerin’ an’ crying.

Hey, don’t let them blues in here. (2x) They shakes me in my bed and sits down in my chair.

Oh, the blues has got me on the go. They’ve got me on the go. They roll around my house, in and out of my front door.83

Carby recognizes, in this song, a sharp contrast between a woman’s obligation to stay at home

and her man’s freedom to roam. In her analysis, this becomes the primary source of tension for

the song’s protagonist. She argues that Smith’s line “feel like calling ‘murder’ let the police squad come get me once more” portrays a woman on the verge of “lashing out.” She further contends that the emotional overload of the song’s protagonist is “validated” by the extent of her helplessness in the surrounding verses.84

Smith’s rebellious persona seems to reject any need for validation by other people.

Nevertheless, as Carby recognizes, blues music is especially dependant upon the listener’s

identification with the performer. Although Smith showed little concern for what critics thought

of her music, she depended upon responses from her fan base, especially in live performance

settings. If she had not spoken directly to their everyday concerns, she probably would not have

attained the following she did. Therefore, Carby reveals that understanding Smith’s relationship

to the listener (and vice versa) is critical to understanding her legacy and power as a black

woman.

Carby initially addressed only one segment of Smith’s audience, working-class African

American women, however, the demographic of Smith’s listeners broadened with the mounting

popularity of her music. She became one of the first African-American performers in whom

83 Ibid., 14-15. 84 Ibid., 14. 38 there was enough interest to merit “white’s only” performances.85 Carby addresses this audience in another article, “Policing the Black Woman’s Body in an Urban Context” (1992). There, part of her analysis explores white aristocratic fascination with blues women. She finds their interest exemplified in various fiction writings of the 1920s and 1930s, including Carl Van Vechten’s book “Nigger Heaven” (1926).86 The book was largely inspired by the writer’s experiences with

Smith and other African Americans prominent in urban culture (he had lived in Chicago and

New York and was an active patron and acquaintance of Smith). Using examples provided by figures such as Van Vechten, Carby argues that there were significant cultural misunderstandings between black and white audiences during the 1920s, which frequently contributed to the white exploitation of black women throughout the early 20th-century.87

A story provided in Elaine Feinstein’s biography of Smith substantiates Carby’s claim.

Carl Van Vechten once invited Bessie Smith to a party at his Manhattan flat and, as was his

custom, he entertained an audience of New York’s cultural elite. The following account, written

by Feinstein, is based on Van Vechten’s account of what happened that night:

[Smith] arrived like an empress, in ermine and much bejeweled . . . she was scrutinized curiously by the staring white faces around her . . . When Van Vechten offered her a Martini she rejected it and demanded a whiskey, and as her friend Ruby fussed with a dangling mink coat she took pleasure in swearing at her to take the damned thing off. . . Van Vechten asked Bessie to sing while [Porter] Grainger accompanied her on the piano. This part of the evening at least went well . . . [However,] she had been drinking all through her performance . . . as Grainger urged Bessie toward the door her hostess [Fania Marinoff-Van Vechten] tried to stop and embrace her. This ill-fated gesture led to a convulsive rejection by Bessie, who knocked her over as she threw off the polite arms, saying: ‘Get the fuck away from me. I never heard of such shit.’ . . . it took considerable aplomb for Van Vechten to help his wife to her feet, and escort an irritable Bessie to the elevator civilly.88

85 Albertson, 64; Feinstein, 37. 86 Carl Van Vechten, Nigger Heaven (New York: Knopf, 1926). 87 Carby, “Policing” in Cultures in Babylon, 30-31. 88 Feinstein, 32-33. 39

Van Vechten and his guests misunderstood Smith; they exploited her for their amusement, and then resented her reaction. Therefore, Smith’s behavior fulfills Carby’s understanding of blues women as the empowered defenders of African American womanhood, vindicated in their rebellion against imposed social expectations. Carby does not consider, however, that Smith was also guilty of exploiting whites.

Chris Albertson, Smith’s primary biographer, continues the Van Vechten story, telling that a sympathetic African American crowd heard Smith’s version of the story a few nights later.

Amidst the approval of their laughter, Smith was heard to say, “You should have seen them ofays looking at me like I was some kind of singing monkey.”89 Smith used this statement to simultaneously scorn white disapproval of her actions, bolster her rebellious stage persona, and reclaim some dignity in a public forum.

Elsewhere in “The Sexual Politics,” Carby portrays Smith as having liberated herself from marital expectations. She states:

Many of the men who were married to blues singers disapproved of their careers: some felt threatened; others, like Edith Johnson’s husband, eventually applied enough pressure to force them to stop singing. Most, like Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey and Ida Cox, did not stop singing the blues, but their public presence, their stardom, their overwhelming popularity and their insistence on doing what they wanted caused frequent conflict with the men in their personal lives.90

Smith’s own marriage to Jack Gee, from 1923 to 1929, demonstrates how marital relationships

often turned sour in the lives of blueswomen. Though it brought tension to her marriage, touring

was vital to Smith’s career. Columbia provided little money from royalties and, financially,

performing became the only viable alternative.91 Even so, Gee resented Smith’s hectic schedule,

89 Albertson, 145. 90 Carby, “Sexual Politics,” 17. 91 Feinstein, 63. 40 her financial independence, and the lavish excesses she indulged in while touring. He cheated adulterously in retaliation to her sexual promiscuities, and she responded violently to his betrayals (even attempting to shoot him on one occasion). Dramatic abuses typified their relationship and eventually brought it to ruin. Carby considers Smith’s retaliations (and perhaps even her divorce) to be acts of liberation from the cultural misogyny perpetuated by male chauvinists like Jack Gee.

Carby’s assessment is perhaps a stretch here. Similar retaliations take place among women from all walks of life, though often in more subtle forms. Rebellion against men is by no means exclusive to black feminists, but black feminists frequently emphasize even the smallest challenge to patriarchal authority.

Smith was married to two (possibly three) different men in the course of her life, and her songs, likely for this reason, often express skepticism for marriage; however, adopting an

aggressive attitude toward men in her repertoire was almost surely a professional decision as

well, one by which Smith intended to present herself as a self-reliant blueswoman.

The blues, however, as Paul Garon expresses, often deal with made-up realities, and not true-to-life occurrences.92 The fantasies of Smith’s songs may have personally been an escape

from the frustrations with marriage, one that working-class African American women of the

period could easily relate to.

Carby finds an assertion of sexual freedom in Smith’s “Young Woman’s Blues,” a statement that was perhaps the singer’s answer to the proposition of marriage and fidelity. The lyrics are:

Woke up this morning when chickens were crowing for day. Felt on the right side of my pillow, my man had gone away.

92 Garon, 54-56. 41

On his pillow he left a note, reading I’m sorry you got my goat No time to marry, no time to settle down.

I’m a young woman and ain’t done running around. (2x)

Some people call me a hobo, some call me a bum, Nobody know my name, nobody knows what I’ve done. I’m as good as any woman in your town, I ain’t no high yella, I’m a deep killer brown.

I ain’t gonna marry, ain’t gonna settle down. I’m gonna drink good moonshine and run these browns down. See that long lonesome road, cause you know it’s got a end. And I’m a good woman and I can get plenty men.93

Carby considers this song important for several reasons: Smith was asserting her own sexual

desirability after being discarded by a lover, but symbolically she was countering the “criticism

that women faced if they broke with social convention.”94 It was a bold move for a woman to

declare her freedom to roam in an era when women were often viewed as the servants of the

home. These are, of course, standard blues lyrics that would merit little attention if sung by a

man. It is tempting to argue that Smith was merely following standard blues conventions;

however, Smith was not a man, and behaving like a bluesman helped her to reject any claims that

she represented the weaker sex. In many ways, it is her answer to the infidelity of the

stereotypical bluesman.

Carby is not always clear as to whose social conventions Smith rebelled against. African

American expectations of women were, of course, different from white expectations.

Conversely, the role of women in society varied between classes. African Americans rarely articulated aspirations to be white, but in their hunger for racial betterment, sometimes emulated

93 Carby, “Sexual Politics,” 18. 94 Ibid., 18-19. 42 white culture. This is visible in the fad for straightened hair, or in characters favored by Harlem

Renaissance writers such as Jessie Faucet.

Smith rebelled equally against the expectations of whites and African Americans.

Understandably, she held white socialites in contempt, but also hated the behavior of “dichty”

(snooty) African Americans, such as her accompanist, Porter Grainger, who ultimately convinced her to attend the infamous Van Vechten party. Her underlying rebellion was perhaps more against class discrimination than racial prejudice. Nevertheless, she seemed to challenge bigotry in all situations.

There is also a hint of irony present in “Young Woman’s Blues.” If one were to reverse the gender of the singer, the transformed song would exemplify a common theme expressed by many male blues singers (that a man could find comfort in homemade liquor and eventually leave town over the loss of a woman). This theme was so pervasive in African-American culture of the “Deep South” that it eventually became a central characteristic of the archetypal bluesman.

Deserted women and children did not consider it honorable for a man to leave; however, at a time when the rural South had so little to offer economically, the urban North seemed the proverbial “land of milk and honey.” Roaming was an understandable masculine response to adversity. Consequently, many African American men could identify with it as it appeared in the blues.

As black feminists would argue, however, blueswomen who appropriated traveling themes subverted the masculine archetype, which in turn gave them its power. No man could have dominion over a woman who openly rejected long-term relationships. She had already removed herself from the institutions of marriage and monogamy. The male objectification of female sexuality was, therefore, overturned and repossessed by the blueswoman. The rejection of 43 long-term relationships for a life of promiscuity might, at first, seem problematic to the subversion of masculine paradigms. If a man impregnates a woman, he remains free to roam. A woman’s freedom is more difficult to negotiate in this situation, for she must decide what to do with the resulting child.

Smith never had a child of her own, but she adopted one. She showered the boy with affection whenever she was around, but left him with her sisters when she toured (which was

most of the time). Consequently, she placed her freedom above the responsibilities of having a

child. Therefore, the rejection of masculine domination might also have meant the rejection of

parental responsibilities for a blueswoman.

Furthermore, both Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith occasionally engaged in same-sex

relationships (although not necessarily with one another). In this behavior, they truly subverted

the masculine paradigm, entirely removing the opposite sex and any possibility of pregnancy

from the equation. If a blueswoman followed this route, she could live out the central idea often

championed in her songs—total freedom from masculine authority.

Carby also mentions another aspect of the blueswoman’s power, one gained from

physical appearances. In a description of what could be either Smith or Rainey, Carby states:

[Blues women’s] physical presence was a crucial aspect of their power; the visual display of spangled dresses, of furs, of gold teeth, of diamonds, of all the sumptuous and desirable aspects of their body, reclaimed female sexuality from being an objectification of male desire to a representation of female desire.”95

This statement describes how a blueswoman dressed, whereas songs such as “Young Woman’s

Blues” describe how blueswomen acted; both dress and song, however, were employed in

similar ways by blues women. Both became uniquely African-American statements of power.

95 Ibid., 18. 44

Ultimately, Carby articulated numerous ways in which Smith and the blueswomen rejected male dominance, and created in its place a new liberated sense of self, not only for the blueswomen, themselves, but for all urban-working class African American women of the period. Shortly after Carby’s first article, Harrison made similar arguments about the blueswomen’s rebellion.

Daphne Duvall Harrison

Carby reads Bessie Smith’s overall message to African American culture as a political manifesto.

Harrison, however, is more concerned with the role industry played in the blueswomen’s rise to

popularity. She emphasizes the social forces shaping Bessie Smith and her contemporaries in

their own time.

Harrison’s first chapter, “Riding ‘Toby’ to the Big Time,” deals mainly with the Theater

Owner’s Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) and how it contributed professionally to blues

women’s success. She observes that the T.O.B.A. was managed solely by African-Americans, who booked shows for African Americans performing throughout the East, South, and Midwest.

Although the booking was an exclusively African-American enterprise, many of the individual theatres comprising the circuit were owned and operated by whites. In these theaters, owners paid as they saw fit, and sometimes even refused to pay performers after a performance.

If performers were treated poorly, they could “black list” certain theatres; they had the option of reporting disreputable venues in the Chicago Defender. Theatre owners who mistreated their acts often lost prospective entertainers and the money they might have brought in.96 Therefore, the African American press gave blues women some control over their industry.

96 Harrison, 25-26. 45

Most importantly, the T.O.B.A. served as a testing ground for future phonograph stars.

Harrison attests that record scouts frequented clubs on the T.O.B.A. circuit. Therefore, the circuit offered performers the possibility of advancing from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle to one of recognition and luxury.

Via its performers, the T.O.B.A. also brought the urban culture of Harlem to outlying

areas of the country; this was especially visible in Smith’s case. Smith’s husband, Jack Gee, had

family in New York City. Furthermore, Columbia Records was based in New York, along with

many of the musicians Smith worked with. Smith, therefore, worked and socialized with the

people of Harlem on a regular basis, and was familiar with many of the emerging cultural trends

there. Her touring shows helped to transmit this cosmopolitan culture around the country.

Since Smith generally represented the working-class, however, she spoke for another side of Harlem than did Harlem Renaissance writers. Smith was invited to perform for dinner parties throughout the country while touring the T.O.B.A. circuit. In Detroit, for example, Smith performed at parties thrown by an ex-showgirl turned socialite, Viola Chesapeake, who could appreciate the world Smith came from because it had once been her own.

Events such as these received attention from the press, mainly in African American papers such as Floyd Snelson’s Interstate Tattler or The Defender.97 Reports of party performances generally cast a favorable light on the hosts as well as the performers, for whom it countered negative press. More importantly, the African American press, by extending positive recognition to Smith, showed that African-Americans of any class could be successful, thereby offering hope for the future of the entire race.

Although many Harlem Renaissance writers rejected blues women, there were

exceptions. Harrison mentions Langston Hughes’ description of Smith’s singing as “sadness . . .

97 Ibid., 33; Albertson, 117. 46 not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter, the absurd, incongruous laughter of a

sadness without even a god to appeal to.”98

Hughes romantic words did not appeal to Smith or working-class audiences; rather, they

were more often valued by the African American bourgeoisie. Any positive critique Hughes

offered helped to vindicate Smith in their eyes. Furthermore, without his approval, later writers

like James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison may not have acknowledged her. In this way, Harrison

corroborates Mary Ellison’s overall stance that the literary industry played a crucial role in

shaping Smith’s legacy.

Like Carby, Harrison analyzes lyrics. Her cultural analyses of Smith generally reiterate and bolster Carby’s arguments. For example, Harrison bears witness to Smith’s obsession with independence in the following lyric from “Sing Sing Prison Blues”:

You can send me up the river or send me to that mean ole jail. (2x) I killed my man and I don’t need no bail.99

Although Harrison’s scholarship is not avowedly black feminist, her emphasis on Smith’s “go it

alone” approach to life (atypical behavior for any women of the era) at least assures the reader

of her commitment to black feminist ideals. Black Pearls initially seems to neglect theory, but it

should be considered a black feminist work on account of Harrison’s choice and arrangement of

subject matter. It is a revision of (or addendum to) a preexisting history that emphasized

bluesmen. Ultimately, an African American woman’s presentation of African American women

in history is, in itself, a black feminist statement.

98 Ibid., 52-53. 99 Ibid., 53; Bessie Smith, The Complete Recordings, Vol. 2, Sony 47471, 1991. 47

Angela Davis

Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is currently the most in-depth black feminist study of blueswomen. Davis explores how blueswomen historically created an orally transmitted black feminist consciousness and expressed it in their music. Her first chapter, “I Used To Be

Your Sweet Mama,” 100 focuses on 1920s blueswomen and their treatment of sexuality, gender, and domesticity. These issues, central to black feminism, have been addressed by Carby and

Harrison. Davis, however, emphasizes the blues women’s personal sense of control over romantic relationships. In “I Used To Be Your Sweet Mama,” she analyzes examples of romantic self-determination taken almost exclusively from the songs of Ma Rainey and Bessie

Smith.

Underlying the chapter is Davis’ sense of how romantic love was expressed in popular

music during the 1920s. She differentiates two kinds of love, the realistic and the idealized,

associating the expression of physical love, provocative love, or ephemeral love with blues

music. Conversely, she contends that unrequited or platonic love appeared more frequently in

other forms of popular music.101

To better understand the unique character of men’s and women’s relationships in 1920s blues music, Davis examines changes then occurring in African American lifestyles. Like

Carby, she discusses the effects of the Great Migration and Northern urbanization upon romantic and familial relationships—men wandered the country looking for jobs; women frequently worked near home and tended the family by themselves. Although this often had a negative

100 Davis, 3-41. 101 Ibid., 3-4. 48 impact on the African American family structure,102 Davis observes the situation as a new source of expression for economic, geographic, and sexual freedoms.

Some African Americans felt free to experiment with new lifestyles and identities during the 1920s. These explorations became the subject matter of many blues songs. Like Carby,

Davis contends that bluesmen typically rejoiced in their freedom, whereas blueswomen rebelled against masculine freedoms by subverting or adopting them as their own. Ironically, the end result was often the same.

Davis emphasizes cultural differences by dividing 1920s America into various spheres— male and female, African American and white, minority and majority, rich and poor, and sacred and secular. Through these dichotomies, a patchwork of period beliefs about relationships emerges. Blues performers also negotiated these differences in their music.

Davis further explains how changes occurring in sacred music affected African American secular music and blues music. Gospel music “increasingly concentrated on the hereafter.”103

Jesus was portrayed more frequently as a benevolent, peaceful comforter, rather than the warrior of the spirituals. Everyday life experiences of antebellum African Americans (i.e. work, family, sabotage, and escape) had once been the focus of sacred music, but after emancipation sacred music became more abstract and more exclusively oriented toward faith experiences, not at all about the physical world around them.

In the secular arena, blues music maintained the spiritual’s dependency upon everyday events by granting worldly matters an almost-sacred level of importance. Davis cites Ralph

102 See Mel Watkins and Jay David, eds., “Black on Black: The Black Woman in the Black World,” in To Be A Black Woman: Portraits in Fact and Fiction (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1970), 147-216. 103 Davis, 5. 49

Ellison on this matter, observing his contention that sexuality took on near-metaphysical proportions in blues music.104

Like Paul Garon, Davis considers sexuality central to the blues. However, she also

believes that when women’s blues emerged it displayed “an even more pronounced emphasis on

love and sexuality” than its masculine counterpart.105 She provides several reasons for this, but

all seem to revolve around the idea that blueswomen were reacting against mainstream bourgeois

marital values advocated during the period. Marriage by middle-class definitions, white or

black, encompassed the idea that a woman needed to settle down and raise children to justify her

worth. Blueswomen, by contrast, almost never sang about children or motherhood. Out of

Bessie Smith’s 252 recorded songs, only 4 mention a husband and wife.106 None of these mentions children, attesting to the disparity between middle-class America, both white and black, and blueswomen’s reality.

Davis evidences this in Smith’s rendition of “Sam Jones Blues:”

Sam Jones left his lovely wife just to step around Came back home ‘bout a year, lookin’ for his high brown

Went to his accustomed door and he knocked his knuckles sore His wife she came, but to his shame, she knew his face no more

Sam said, “I’m your husband, dear.” But she said, “Dear, that’s strange to hear.” You ain’t talking to Mrs. Jones, you speakin’ to Miss Wilson now

“I used to by your lofty mate But the judge done changed my fate.”

“Was a time you could have walked right in and called this place your home sweet home But now it’s all mine for all time, I’m free and livin’ all alone . . .

104 Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1972), 245. 105 Davis, 11. 106 Ibid., 12-13. 50

Say, hand me the key that unlocks my front door Because that bell don’t read ‘Sam Jones’ no more, no You ain’t talkin’ to Mrs. Jones, you speakin’ to Miss Wilson now.”107

Davis brings attention to the contrast between “proper” English phrases and the Black working-

class vernacular present in this song. She interprets statements such as “I’m your husband, dear”

and “I used to be your lofty mate” as representations of the “dominant white culture.”108 These are mocked by the vernacular “You ain’t talkin’ to Mrs. Jones, You speakin’ to Miss Wilson now.” Smith’s singing style makes the emphasis even more apparent. As Davis states, “Smith translates into musical contrast and contention the clash between two culture’s perceptions of marriage, and particularly women’s place within the institution.”109

Davis considers Mr. Jones a representation of “white cultural conceptions,”110 though he is probably a black bourgeois imitating white high society to assert status, power, or control over his wife. His speech evokes a character that Davis refers to interchangeably as “white,”

“mainstream,” and “dominant”111—all antithetical to the working-class, African American culture represented by the song’s protagonist.

In performance, Smith took on the role of the protagonist turning her man away at the

door. Davis writes “it is easy to imagine the testifying responses Smith no doubt evoked in her

female audiences’ responses that affirmed working-class black women’s sense of themselves as

relatively emancipated, if not from marriage itself, then at least from some of its most confining

107 Bessie Smith, The Complete Recordings, Vol. 1, Sony 47091, 1991. 108 Davis, 12. 109 Ibid., 12-13. 110 Ibid., 12. 111 Ibid., 12-13. 51 ideological constraints.”112 Smith’s recorded performance of the text now resonates with Davis and other black feminists in similar ways.

During the 1920s, domesticity for poor African American women was at least as oppressive as the predominant sexual mores, and therefore, a natural theme for blueswomen to rebel against. Many blueswomen were on the move, constantly touring to provide the added

income needed to offset the relatively small income recording royalties provided them. Their

lives were not compatible with domestic life, and the idea of staying in one place was, at least for

Smith, unsettling.

All three scholars featured in this chapter have noted that men were expected to respond

to hard times by traveling, escaping their troubles by jumping on a freight train. Many women

(though not blueswomen) stayed at home, maintained the house, and bemoaned the absence of

their significant other. Blueswomen like Smith showed women they could do more than that.

They could be independent in the absence of a man. Conversely, whether or not they would take

a returning man back was also shown to be their decision, not his. The independence of black

women throughout America was celebrated in “Sam Jones Blues.” Davis presents a bolder

statement of this independence, however, in Smith’s “Mistreatin’ Daddy.” At the beginning of

the song a reason is provided as to why the protagonist seeks her independence:

Daddy, mama’s got the blues, the kind of blues that’s hard to lose. ‘Cause you mistreated me and drove me from your door.113

However, the song ends with the protagonist demonstrating her control over the situation in a

direct statement to her man:

112 Ibid., 12. 113 Ibid., 23. 52

If you see me setting on another daddy’s knee Don’t bother me, I’m as mean as can be I’m like the butcher right down the street I can cut you all to pieces like I would a piece of meat.114

This is not the romanticized version of love that was often put forth in most popular recordings

prior to the classic blueswomen’s emergence; however, as Davis contends, this is a realistic

portrayal of how a woman scorned might react in an African-American community as a means of

survival. If she were not willing to be entirely independent, a woman could at least choose her

“daddy.”

Davis, like Carby, discusses domestic violence as expressed in women’s blues. She

believes that blueswomen have been misinterpreted as promoting “acquiescent and therefore

antifeminist responses to misogynist abuse.”115 Bessie Smith’s songs “It Won’t Be You,”116

“Slow and Easy Man,”117 “Eavesdropper’s Blues,”118 “Love Me Daddy Blues,”119 “Hard Driving

Papa,”120 “Yes Indeed He Do,”121 and “Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do”122 all include

references to domestic violence. At first glance, most of them seem to evidence resignation or

even contentment in response to abuse. “Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” for example,

includes the infamous lines “Well, I’d rather my man would hit me than to jump right up and

quit me” and “I swear I won’t call no copper if I’m beat up by my papa.” Nevertheless, a typical

audience of black, lower-class, urban women could relate to the dilemma of choosing between

these evils.

114 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 1. 115 Davis, 25. 116 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 4. 117 Ibid. 118 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 1. 119 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 2. 120 Bessie Smith, The Complete Recordings, Vol. 3, Sony 47474, 1992. 121 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 4. 122 Smith, Complete Recordings, Vol. 1. 53

Conclusions

Carby, Harrison, and Davis offer important understandings of Bessie Smith. Even more than scholars before them, they discuss Smith’s songwriting, stage presence, and life decisions as tools of rebellion. She was mainly interested in confronting the standards imposed upon her by the black bourgeoisie. She did this by mocking their language, threatening physical violence, and flaunting the details of her alternative lifestyle (in attire, lyrics, and public behavior). With nearly every action or expression in her repertoire, Smith demanded the freedom to live life in the manner she saw fit, not by someone else’s standard.

Black feminists have seized upon Smith’s rebellion because it often resembles their own.

In the beginning, black feminists argued for equality in the workplace, schools, and at home.

Although blueswomen’s criticisms were far less ambitious, they at least pressed for equality in the context of familial and romantic relationships.

Similarly, when black feminists became disenfranchised with the broader white feminist movement, they branched off to discuss their own unique concerns—the urban family structure and inner-city living conditions. Like 1920s blueswomen, they championed the urban working- class, and sought to represent them.

Before Carby, Harrison, and Davis there was little academic sensitivity toward the social impact of blueswomen upon black, working-class women. Black feminists, by aligning themselves with the original blues women, have created a historical backdrop for their own struggles. By finding parallels between the past and present, they can better understand patterns in the prejudices confining them, and determine ways to speak out effectively against them.

54

CHAPTER V.

CLOSING REMARKS

The breadth of scholarship on Bessie Smith is staggering; it captures nearly every conceivable

angle of the singer’s life and work—from her melodies, message, and socio-political importance

to the effects of industry, myth, and family on her life and music.

With a broad spectrum of topics to choose from, scholars have tended to emphasize their

own concerns over those raised by other scholars: black feminists privilege Smith as a liberated

woman who championed many of their values, but neglect her musicianship; literary critics

consider Smith’s lyrics important to the blues, but ignore her expressivity as a performer;

biographers attempt to differentiate fact from myth in Smith’s life, but speak marginally about

how myth and folklore have shaped her legacy.

Furthermore, research on Smith is constantly in flux. It spans the better part of a century

and shifts ideologically as old sources disappear and new ones became available. Recall how

Oliver and Albertson, having had access to very different sources, produced contradictory interpretations of the singer’s life. Moreover, today’s scholars cannot speak to those who knew

Smith personally and, therefore, must rely on these disparate reports.

Also, the presentation of Smith in scholarship has been subject to scholars’ cultural,

historical, and gender biases. Her torch songs were bawdy for Oliver, but free-spirited for

Albertson. Her lyrics represented direct realities for Charters, but were surrealistic for Garon.

She was a product of her time for Harrison, but modeled the roots of black feminism for Carby

and Davis. Today’s research, examined in retrospect, will likely be plagued with similar biases.

Blind spots and discrepancies occur between accounts, yet there is a sense that our

understanding of Smith is evolving, somehow becoming more comprehensive. Black feminists 55 have had the greatest impact on Smith’s legacy in recent times, envisioning her as a strong woman more than past scholars did. Furthermore, Smith was originally packaged as a philandering wild woman, but aspects of her marriage and family life now factor in equally. If anything, her words and actions have become more meaningful over time. It is doubtful that

Charters, in 1962, could have foreseen Garon’s Freudian-surrealist analysis or Angela Davis’ black feminist interpretations.

Present-day ideologies frequently color our judgment, tempting us to mask modern agendas behind Smith’s voice. For example, Davis’ perspective that “‘T’ain’t Nobody’s

Business If I Do” was a protest against men abusing their women may not be entirely accurate; more likely, Smith was merely making a statement that she lived by her own prerogative.

Certainly, that would have been more in line with the period beliefs of most abused working- class black women.

Considering the potential for misrepresentation, research into scholars’ identities and ideological backgrounds is important. No one, not even a black feminist, is likely to represent

Smith fully in the manner she would have wanted, and all perspectives should, therefore, be cross-referenced. In the 1920s, black women from the working class rarely represented themselves, and scholars who study them today come from signficantly different backgrounds.

Nevertheless, nearly all of them recognize Smith’s importance to American culture and popular music in the United States, which is the most important perspective anyone can pass on regarding Smith.

56

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