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BESSIE SMITH/ 2009
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_091 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
Down-Hearted Blues (Hunter-Austin)
Gee, but it's hard to love someone when that someone don't love you!
I'm so disgusted, heart-broken, too; I've got those down-hearted blues;
Once I was crazy 'bout a man; he mistreated me all the time,
The next man I get has got to promise me to be mine, all mine!
Trouble, trouble, I've had it all my days,
Trouble, trouble, I've had it all my days;
It seems like trouble going to follow me to my grave.
I ain't never loved but three mens in my life;
I ain't never loved but three men in my life:
My father, my brother, the man that wrecked my life.
It may be a week, it may be a month or two,
It may be a week, it may be a month or two,
But the day you quit me, honey, it's comin' home to you.
I got the world in a jug, the stopper's in my hand,
I got the world in a jug, the stopper's in my hand,
I'm gonna hold it until you meet some of my demands.
Transcribed from vocals by Bessie Smith, recorded February 16, 1923.
From Bessie Smith: 1923; The Chronological Classics 761.
-www.heptune.com/downhear.html
Bessie Smith -
Bessie Smith (July 9, 1892 or April 15, 1894 - September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer.
The most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s,[1] Smith is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists.[2]
Life:
For the 1900 census, Bessie Smith's mother, Laura Smith, reported that Bessie was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in July 1892. However, for the following census (1910), taken on April 16, her sister, Viola Smith, and the census taker agreed on or assigned her April 15, 1894, the day preceding the census; that date appears on all subsequent documents, and was the one observed by the entire Smith family. There also remains a census-based debate regarding the size of Bessie Smith's family. The 1870 and 1880 censuses report three older half-siblings, but these census reports are at odds with later interviews with her family and contemporaries.
She was the daughter of Laura (Owens) Smith and William Smith. William Smith was a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher (he was listed in the 1870 census as a minister of the gospel, in Moulton, Lawrence, Alabama) who died before his daughter could remember him. By the time she was nine, she had lost her mother as well, and her older sister Viola was left in charge of caring for her sisters and brothers.[3]
As a way of earning money for their impoverished household, Smith and her brother Andrew began performing on the streets of Chattanooga as a duo, she singing and dancing, he accompanying on guitar; their preferred location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets in the heart of the city's African-American community.
In 1904, her oldest brother, Clarence, covertly left home by joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. "If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him," said Clarence's widow, Maud. "That's why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child."[4]
In 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe and arranged for its managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher, to give her an audition. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company also included Ma Rainey.
By the early 1920s, Smith had starred with Sidney Bechet in How Come?, a musical that made its way to Broadway, and spent several years working out of Atlanta, Georgia's 81 Theater, performing in black theaters along the East Coast. Following a run-in with the producer of How Come?, she was replaced by Alberta Hunter and returned to Philadelphia, where she had taken up residence. There, she met and fell in love with Jack Gee, a security guard whom she married on June 7, 1923, just as her first recordings were being released by Columbia Records. The marriage was a stormy one, with infidelity on both sides. During the marriage, Smith became the biggest headliner on the black Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit, running a show that sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers and made her the highest-paid black entertainer of her day. Gee was impressed by the money, but never adjusted to show business life, and especially not Smith's bisexuality. In 1929, when Smith learned of Gee's affair with another performer, Gertrude Saunders, she ended the marriage, but never sought a legal divorce. Smith eventually found a common-law husband in an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle and the antithesis of her husband. She stayed with him until her death.[5]
References:
1. ^ Jasen, David A.; Gene Jones (1998). Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930. Schirmer Books. pp. 289. ISBN 978-0028647425.
2. ^ Bessie Smith at sparknotes.com
3. ^ Albertson. Bessie (Revised and Expanded Edition), Yale University Press (New Haven), 2003. ISBN 0-300-09902-9.
4. ^ Albertson, 2003, page 11.
5. ^ Albertson, 2003.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Smith
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