Question

Listening guide to Bessie Smith's "In the house blues"

Answer 1

Bessie Smith is the best-known of the female "classic blues" (or "city blues") singers from the and (others include Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Clar. Listening Guide to Backwater Blues by Bessie Smith--will use during African American music history timeline.Bessie Smith was the first superstar of the blues with one of the greatest voices of the twentieth century - dubbed 'The Empress Of The Blues', her majestic delivery and indomitable spirit were unsurpassed. Re-mastered for exceptional audio clarity, the emotional intensity and expressiveness of Bessie Smith still takes the breath away.

Bessie Smith sang with a kind of heartfelt emotion and raw unfiltered passion that could only come from someone with first-hand experience of the deep dark shades of the blues. In her short but kaleidoscopic life Bessie knew poverty, fame, wealth, love, lust, and the dangerous lure of liquor all too well. Enjoy an excellent compendium of Bessie's finest work on this Rough Guide.The opening track on this album is Bessie's debut recording from 1923, 'Down Hearted Blues'. An upbeat tinkling piano line underpins Bessie's honeyed vocals that wind around the blues scale with ease. 'Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out' is a lackadaisical slow-paced cover of the well known song. Bessie's version is soaked in a thick and treacly half-hearted attitude that conveys the hopeless sentiment of the song perfectly. One of her most successful hits, 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find' is a growly lament, a bitter ode to good honest men, who Bessie tells us are increasingly 'hard to find'. Continuing on the vein of unsatisfactory men, Bessie tackles cheeky double-entendres with an unmistakeably mischievous tone on 'I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl'.Bessie Smith died aged 43 after being involved in a car accident just outside Memphis, TN .

Her seminal version of 'St Louis Blues' featured here includes Louis Armstrong's immortally strong cornet playing. The dream duo play in a perfectly anguished yet languorous mood. Bessie is also equally at home investing syrupy Tin Pan Alley songs with a deep level of emotion. 'Muddy Water' is transformed from a plodding simple song to a hazy bluesy masterpiece. Later in her career Bessie began to favour a soulful swing to a slow blues tempo. Husky and rasped vocal slides characterize the gently swinging ballad, 'Gimme A Pigfoot And A Bottle Of Beer'.

This Rough Guide also features a bonus disc of those artists who were contemporaries with, and were influenced by, the legendary Bessie Smith.