Experiencing Bessie Smith: A Listener's Companion

2017 | Music & Dance

Bessie Smith occupies a unique place in the history of American music. She was one of the first undisputed artists to come from American vernacular tradition of the 20th Century. As a woman, she was a figure of extraordinary power. She organized and led her own touring companies, wrote part of her repertoire, controlled her many relationships (romantic and otherwise), and even negotiated her own contracts. This type of agency was virtually unheard of in the popular music industry during the first half of the century, and she is often cited as a major influence on artists who sought to manage their work and reputation. Her musical output comprises a long series of recordings done between 1923 and 1933, all of which feature her vocal range, musical ability, and emotional power. Her band included some of the best of the black musicians of the day. In Experiencing Bessie Smith: A Listener's Companion, John Clark sets the stage for chronicling Bessie Smith enormous contribution to and influence on music, the music industry, and the recording industry. While her recording career lasted only a decade, she toured long before setting her music to vinyl, much of it amply documented.

Singers of every type imaginable were influenced by her work, although in radically different ways, from Billie Holiday to Janis Joplin. As Clark illustrates, learning how to listen to Bessie Smith's work means just as much grasping how that work had been extended and reinterpreted by her successors as performed and recorded by Smith herself.

John Clark (Author)