Bessie Smith Empress Of The Blues Rhetorical Devices

Bessie Smith, also known as the Empress of the Blues, was born, according to the 1900 census, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892; a date that provided her mother. Bessie Smith was the daughter of Laura (born Owens) and William Smith. William Smith was a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher. He died before his daughter could remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, she had lost her mother and her brother as well. Her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings. In 1904, her brother, Clarence, left for joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. Bessie was to young to join and her brother left without telling her. In 1912, he returned to Chattanooga and arranged for its managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher, to give Smith an audition. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company also

included the well known singer, Ma Rainey. In 1923, Smith was older and she fell in love with a security guard named Jack Gee. She was a singer ever since. One day she was in a car accident and died on September 26, 1937 at the age of approximately 43. In 1970, a young singer named Janis Joplin made a head tomb stone for her.

Bessie Smith sang a song called Down-Hearted Blues, composed by Alberta Hunter and Lovie Austin.

Bessie Smith sang this song on February 16, 1923 when she was still single. The theme of the song is immediately set from the first line, “Gee but it's hard to love someone when that someone don't love you.” There it already makes sense. This is a song about a woman who feels that nobody will love her and that it’s hard to love someone. The song goes on by saying, “Once I was crazy 'bout a man he mistreated me all the time the next man I get has got to promise to be mine, all mine.” First she has a husband that mistreats her, like the lyrics say, and then she has another one and lies that she is the only one and that he’s going to be all hers. Wow, talk about a love song. This song was meant to be relaxing, but at the same time depressing because of the lyrics. This piece was important for introducing a solo. It looks to me that since Bessie is singing and the piano is playing, that it is a solo because only the rhythm section is playing. In this instance it's the piano. I don’t mean like a group solo, more like for a

festival.
Bessie Smith sang many songs such as “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” or “T'ain't Nobody's Biz-Ness If I Do.” Smith’s recording of Down-Hearted Blues sold 780,000 records in the first six months and then it would go to become 2 million copies. Bessie Smith's recording was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2002. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001 and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock. The recording also received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2006.