Known as the "Empress of the Blues," Bessie Smith was a successful vaudeville entertainer who became the highest paid African American performer of the Roaring Twenties. This revised and expanded biography debunks many of the myths that have circulated since her untimely death in 1937. Writing with insight and candor about the singer's personal life and career, the author supplements his research with dozens of interviews with her relatives, friends,...

From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at...

Bessie Smith's transformation from a struggling young singer into 'The Empress of the Blues', who became one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s and is an enduring icon today.

The life of the Negro singer who flourished in the twenties and was known as "Queen" of the blues.

Recounts the life of the famous blues singer who flourished during the 1920s.