Her tour made a good profit, and the TOBA board decided to advance her three thousand dollars to mount two new shows for them. I find the blues lyrics she herself wrote to be some of her most evocative and satisfying. Death: June 06, 1973 (84) Philadelphia, Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, United States. Not until the second day did they manage to get Down Hearted Blues and Gulf Coast Blues recorded. In 1960 Edward Albees play The Death of Bessie Smith expanded and spread the myth, and in 1970 Time magazine ran a piece titled Racially Rationed Health, which opened by citing the medical treatment of Bessie Smith in a sentence containing three erroneous details: After her black Samaritan driver [1] had been turned away from white hospitals [2], she at last reached a hospital that was willing to admit her . Another story claimed that Smith was refused admittance to the first hospital to which she was brought (being a whites-only facility) and died as a result of the delay in treatment; it was this latter version that was used by playwright Edward Albee in his 1959 work The Death of Bessie Smith. Gertrude had the good fortune to be out. In the early hours of September 26th, while en route to Mississippi after a performance in Memphis, the singer and her current partner Richard Morgan crashed into a large truck parked on the shoulder of an unlit road; Morgan was largely unaffected by the accident, but Smith sustained a serious injury to one of her arms. Before, she had blamed poor turnout on the Depression; now she feared that she was losing her following. She also knew the value of singing a comedy lyric straight instead of hamming it up; shes hilarious in her deadpan delivery of songs like Send Me to the Lectric Chair, Youve Been a Good Ole Wagon, Mean Old Bed Bug Blues, and I Got What It Takes (But It Breaks My Heart to Give It Away). Her best musicians shared her subtle sense of humor; Charlie Green, Joe Smith, and the young Louis Armstrong reveal the same sly wit in their accompaniments. WebJack Gee is 63. She certainly spent enough nights behind bars for public drunkenness and brawls in dives and hotel rooms to write Jail House Blues. In it she gives a vivid picture of long days in prison, leavening her tale of woe with a sense of humor as she warns the warden: You better stop your man from ticklin me under my chin /. She began an affair with Agie Pitts, a teenage dancer in her show. I had begun to wonder myself. In April 1924 she and her husband again stayed in Harlem with his mother while she recorded, and it was there that she became friendly with Ruby, Jacks niece, who was twenty. There was honest heartbreak in those vowels. From http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bessie_Smith. Bessie never had any biological children, but in the Queen Latifah movie we see her (informally) adopted son, Jack Gee, Jr. (1919-1995), who had been born to the niece of one of Smith's chorus girls, Margaret Warren. Bessie fought violently with Jack, wrecked the room, and emerged covered with blood and feathers to take the cab straight back to Detroit. Partner of Gertrude C. Saunders. This photo of Bessie was taken in 1926, when she was at the height of her stardom. WebIn the late '20s, Gee gee-whizzed his way into three grand worth a production money, supposedly for a new show starring Smith entitled Steamboat Days. Bessie heard the news in a bar, fled, and broke down and wept in her hotel room. They recorded two songs she had just written, Back Water Blues and Preachin the Blues., When she finally headed home to face Jack, she found that he had left for Hot Springs, Arkansas, telling people he needed to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. Concerned, she went there and paid for his stay, and they made up once again. In an attempt to save their marriage Smith adopted a six-year-old boy; the son of one of Smith's chorus girl's niece. Fortunately it survivedthe only existing footage of one of the greatest performers of our century. In the 1980s, when I came to New York, I dropped all Bessie Smith numbers from my repertoire, leaving them to singers there who specialized in urban blues. She catches him with a young woman in a room in a gambling house, throws the woman out, gets knocked down by her boyfriend, grabs a bottle of liquor, takes a swig, and sings a verse a cappella . The film was shown often between 1929 and 1932. Okeh Records and the first black-owned company, Black Swan, both rejected her. Since nothing could be played back, Bessie had to do repeated takes until someone decided one was good enough. She would twist out an evocative word for up to six notes to dramatize it: Bessie misbehaved. My experience consisted of six years in school choirs, two roles in civic theater musicals, and a few weeks of singing her songs on long, solitary walks through the parks of Paris. Mamie Smith, the other famous blues singer, had a prettier voice, but Bessies had more soul in it. The salesman laughed at her and said there was no way on earth a Negro woman could afford it. by Len Lear On May 16 my wife and I watched the HBO movie, Bessie, starring Queen Latifah playing the . 1929)Son: Jack Gee, Jr. (adopted)Slept with: Arthur "Eggie" Pitts (musician)Slept with: Lillian Simpson (dancer)Boyfriend: Richard Morgan (bootlegger), Bessie Smith Blues Hall of Fame 1980 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1989 Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Empty Bed Bluess (1983) Grammy Hall of Fame Award for St. Louis Blues (with Louis Armstrong) (1993) Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Downhearted Blues (2006), Do you know something we don't? I understood that Bessie was a key artist in the development of jazz singing; I just didnt respond to her music. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Cable stations devoted to it reach sixty-two million homes. Ruby, threatened by Jack, left Bessies troupe for the Gertrude Saunders show. Another claim is that Dr. Smith refused to transport Bessie in his own car for fear of it getting too bloody. All of this is easily dispelled. He graduated in 1986 from Osaka University Medical School and earned a Ph.D. in 1993. While still very young, Bessie, accompanied by her brother Andrew on guitar, began dancing and singing on the streets in order to supplement her sister's income as a laundry worker; this activity did not have the approval of Viola, but was encouraged by her oldest brother Clarence, who was already making his own living as a traveling entertainer. In 1970 Columbia brought out Bessies complete recorded work on five double albums. Mahalia Jackson, who disapproved of Bessies hedonism and blatantly sexual numbers, felt constrained to hide her admiration until late in her life. Bessies appetite for liquor wasnt all she indulged. I introduced myself as an American singer available for bookings, but the street-wise club owners and musicians just smiled, shook their heads, and told me I shouldnt be out alone at night. Bessie plays a woman driven to drink by her cheating lover. Her performances in Atlanta and Birmingham drew record-breaking crowds and thunderous applause. Her popularity continued to grow as the decade progressed -- as did her reputation as a temperamental and free-spirited individual. Her phrasing was full of surprises, some words compressed, others tantalizingly strung out. WebIn 1979, Jack Gee Jr., the son of Bessie Smiths estranged husband, appealed his case to the Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania. She was forced to reduce her sisters allowances, and the women, who drank heavily and fought constantly, began to express resentment toward her. Jack caught her at it, and shed buy him an expensive present. So Bessie was buried in an unmarked grave at Mount Lawn Cemetery in Sharon Hill, Delaware County. Jack now appeared on her tours only to ask for money. DOB: August 6, 1930 Died: August 14, 2010 Education: Monks Abbey Primary School Occupation: Singer, songwriter, actress, civil rights activist Genres: Jazz Full Name: Anna Marie Wooldridge Spouse: Max Roach (m. 19621970) Children: No Baby Years Active: 19562007 Abbey Lincoln Bessies career was taking off. Bessie Smith was an American Blues singer who was born on the 15 th of April 1894. Benefits held in both the 1940s and the 1950s raised enough money for a tombstone, but the proceeds, given to Jack Gee, disappeared. Many of her classic twelve-bar blues have promising titles but little else to offer besides her fine singing. Also, he was tall and handsome, a real sharp dresser. Thomas Childers answers a summons to Memphis, Tennessee. He also wrote the Grammy-winning liner notes for the 1970 reissues of her complete work on Columbia Records and for the current five-volume set of CDs. As Dr. Smith was examining them, an ambulance with a black driver, the one summoned by Broughton, arrived and took away Bessie and Richard Morgan, who was unhurt. She avoided the problem of monotony in the classic twelve-bar blues structure (the same line twice, then a rhyming line) by varying the way she sang the repeated first line, emphasizing a different word or playing with the rhythm to create interest and suspense. In the fall of 1937 Smith accepted the role of featured performer with the Broadway Rastus show for a tour of the South. Theaters she had once filled were closing down, and after nine years Columbia dropped her. Expertly marketed to the younger generation at a time when rock and pop stars including Joplin, Cass Elliott of The Mamas and the Papas (who called Bessie the first soul singer), Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles were citing the strong influence of early blues artists on their own work, the series sold two hundred thousand double albums and won two Grammys. She didnt know how to dressshe just sang in her street clothesbut she was such a natural that she could wreck anyones show. Before long she broke into the main black vaudeville circuit, the TOBA (Theater Owners Booking Association). That same year she formed her own act with dancer/vocalist Wayne "Buzzin" Burton in association with Park's Big Revue at the Dixie theater in Atlanta -- a city that would serve as her base of operations into the 1920s. They got along very well, they both loved a good time, and they respected each other. She seemed to have found peace and comfort with Morgan, who by all accounts was the love of her life. They left at 1:00, Jack Gee, Jr., and the liberal press jumped on the story and kept it alive, he for personal reasons, the press for political ones. . Bessie promptly lifted up her skirt and took wadded bills out of little pockets in a carpenters apron full of cash, her wearable bank. When I read that Bessie Smith was one of got hold of by the woman who is called the Empress of the Blues. In spite of the success of St. Louis Blues, 1929 proved to be a difficult year for Smith -- for both personal and professional reasons. That summer Bessie finally got to work with two accompanists who enhanced her music instead of encumbering it, the trombonist Charlie Green and the cornetist Joe Smith. The very first song they did, Cake Walking Babies, has a clarity and vibrancy never heard before on Bessies records; on CD it jumps out from the previous tracks like the sun bursting through the clouds. Word of her success with the new swing sound spread, more bookings came in, and things started looking up again. Alberta Hunter had recorded Down Hearted Blues and done well with it the year before, but Bessies version did far better, selling 780,000 copies within six months. WebBorn: 15-Apr - 1894 Birthplace: Chattanooga, TN Died: 26-Sep - 1937 Location of death: Clarksdale, MS [1] Cause of death: Accident - Automobile Remains: Buried, Mount Lawn Cemetery, Sharon Hill, PA Gender: Female Race or Ethnicity: Black Sexual orientation: Bisexual Occupation: Singer Nationality: United States The other half was given by a woman named Juanita Green, who as a little girl hoping for a performing career had met Bessie when she coached children in a Harlem theater. Many of her classic twelve-bar blues have promising titles but little else to offer besides her fine singing. Nobody knows my name / nobody knows what Ive done / Im as good as any woman in your town. Pride, sorrow, and hope rang out in her mighty voiceand in my own heartas she concluded, See that long, lonesome road / Lord, you know, its got ta end / and Im a good woman / and I can get plenty men.. 
She refused to do blues, choosing instead four upbeat pop songs. A new recording technique, the electrical method, was being used for the first time that day. A subsequent, The magazine made another attempt to rectify the error in the early 1940s, running an interview with the first person on the scene of the accident, a white doctor named Hugh Smith. Bessie was my favorite, but I never let people know I listened to her, she admitted. This is what they meant. Her tumultuous relationship with husband Jack Gee had finally come to an end, and in an act of vindictiveness he removed from her the two closest people in Smith's life: her adopted son and her niece Ruby Walker. Richard didnt. She didnt trust anything with a seal on it. Annoyed by her drinking, Jack made efforts to tour with her, punishing her carousing with scoldings and beatings. Not long afterward the least successful show of her career -- a Broadway musical called Pansy -- opened to extremely poor reviews, closing only three days later. Still, she made the best of any breaks. Birth. In top-forty pop-soul songs, I hear all the vocal effects she pioneered with none of her sincerity and substance. Good, said Bessie. Like all performers in the early years of the recording industry, Bessie had to sing into a cone-shaped horn stuck through a hole in a draped wall. Her phrasing was full of surprises, some words compressed, others tantalizingly strung out. Reflections on the Rat Pack The show ended a successful run in Memphis on Saturday night, September 26, 1937, and Bessie, feeling restless, wanted to move on right away. The boy's father had been a stranger in the night, and the mother was having trouble making ends meet since she had other children. A subsequent Down Beat story gave the correct information that Bessie had actually been taken directly to the black hospital in Clarksdale and had died from loss of blood, but the myth lived on. WebJohn Gee is 59 years old and was born on 02/24/1963.John Gee lives in Jackson, MN; previous cities include Aurora CO and Richardson TX.Other names that John uses includes John E Gee, John C Gee and John R Gee. The film premiered on May 16, 2015. In 1929 she was so happy because she had just been in a movie, 'St. In 1915 she joined Rainey as a member of Fat Chappelle's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, followed by stints in Pete Werley's Florida Cotton Blossoms Minstrels Show and the Silas Green Minstrel Show in 1916. Twenty-seven years ago newspapers reported that the rock singer Janis Joplin had single-handedly done the deed at last. You better stay there, cause you cant sing a note. Years later Green, at fourteen, showed her reverence for Bessie by turning up to scrub her kitchen floor every Saturday, and Bessie often rewarded her by cooking her a batch of fried chitterlings and scallions. On appeal, Mr. Gee Jr., the heir to his fathers estate and by default the legal heir to the Bessie Smith estate brought five claims against CBS Records, which had purchased Columbia Records. It seems then to have been forgotten until 1950, when a group of well-meaning white liberals petitioned the NAACP to destroy it because of its portrayal of blacks as lowlifes. Gee v. CBS Briefs, No. In the 1950s well-meaning liberals tried to have it destroyed. When she didnt have a responsive musical partner, she acted as her own accompanist, filling in between the written lines with additional words or phrases to keep the song moving. . LOCKED IN A STRANGE, TESTY COLLABORATION lit by the fires of a burning world, George M. Cohan and James Cagney produced a masterpiece of popular history in which everything is true except the facts. They left at 1:00 A.M. and traveled in strained silence for seventy-five miles on a straight dark stretch of road. What Happened To Americas Public Schools? Youve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. That, in turn, ended up being a most fateful moment. Both Clarksdale facilities were small country hospitals with only the most basic equipment, according to Dr. Smith. documentary (directed by Ken Burns) on the subject, discusses the joys and wonders of our native art form. . WebApr 15, 1894, A Star Was Born 1906, Orphan 1912, On Her Own 1923, The Big Break 1913, The Mother and the Empress Jun 7, 1923, Happiness 1925, A Son 1928, Falling Action 1928, Heartbreaking 1929, Empty 1933, A Revival? This great artist belongs to everyone who responds to her, and transcends all boundaries of race, nationality, generation, and category. She always mentioned the Lords name. He could count money and he could ask for money, but thats about it.. I waited for this crazy desire to fade, but it wouldnt. Sometimes he would lock me in the basement (on the 1600 block of Christian Street) and not feed me, but my mother always brought me lot of gifts when she came home from a tour, although she would not usually stay home for long. She favored homemade corn liquor. (Janis died the following year of a drug overdose.). WebWhen Jack, Jr. was ten, Jack Gee came and took him from Bessie's home when she wasn't there (in the movie Bessie is home and desperately tries to stop Jack). When Bessie threatened to get someone else to drive her, he gave in. The big-city black public was no longer amused by the broad humor and racial stereotypes of black vaudeville. Too busy for a honeymoon, she recorded seven more songs, accompanied this time by Fletcher Henderson, and then took off for a tour of the South. Sawnee 
Richard was very jovial when hed had a few drinks, but he never got nasty. Thats why her blues seemed almost like hymns., She had a profound influence on one of the greatest singers of religious music. There are no reviews yet. Queen Latifah stars as Smith, and supporting roles are played by Michael Kenneth Williams as Smith's first husband Jack Gee, and Mo'Nique as Ma Rainey. There has been controversy regarding the circumstances ever since, due to her relationships with Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Bessie began re-hearsals on a new tent show, the Harlem Frolics . [1] Webjack gee, jr. Share Tweet. Jack Gee (1889-1973), Bessie's extremely violent husband from whom she had been separated, thwarted all efforts to purchase a stone, once or twice even pocketing money raised for that purpose, according to researchers of Bessie. An ambulance arrived to transport her to a black hospital in nearby Clarksdale, where, according to the testimony of the attending doctor, she died within 10 hours of having been admitted despite extensive medical attention. Words in Bessies songs that had meant nothing to me the year before were great comfort and inspiration to me now. Over the next couple years the young performer's abilities propelled her from dancer to chorus to featured soloist in quick succession, and by 1914 her popularity rivaled that of the company's featured performer Ma Rainey. He was perfect for Bessie.. CHARLES SAXONS fond but clear-eyed cartoons are a definitive record of suburban life in the 1960s and 70s, For 70 years, American Heritage has been the leading magazine of U.S. history, politics, and culture. About ?? She had better bands on the road than in the studio, he said. Her timing was solid, dynamic, and exciting, no matter how little rhythmic support she got from her musicians. 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