The blues emerged as a distinct African-American musical form in the early twentieth century. It typically employed a twelve-bar framework and three-lined stanzas; its roots are based in early African-American songs, such as field hollers and work songs, and generally have a melancholy mood. The blues can be divided into many sub-genres, including Classical, Country, and Urban. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the careers of two of Classical blues most influential and legendary singers: Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Ma Rainey, considered by many to be the “Mother of the Blues,” was one of the first pioneers of the classical blues style. She sang with a deep, rich, and quite often rough contralto voice while the voices of her contemporaries a generation later were more harmonious. Rainey was an important figure in connecting the Classical blues, largely female dominated, with the predominately male Country blues.1 Born Gertrude Pridgett in Georgia in 1886 to parents who had both performed in the minstrel shows, she was exposed to music at a very early age. At the age of fourteen, she performed in a local talent show called “The Bunch of Blackberries,” and by 1900 she was regularly singing in public.2 Over the next couple of decades, she worked in a variety of traveling minstrel shows, including Tolliver's Circus and Musical Extravaganza, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels; she was one of the first women to incorporate the blues into minstrelsy. It was while working with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels that she met William Rainey, whom she married in 1904; together, they toured as “Ma and Pa Rainey: Assassinators of the Blues.” By the early 1920s, she was a star of the Theater Owners' Booking Agency (TOBA), which were white-... ... middle of paper ... ...line of Smith's career – and in Classical blues, in general – was due to changing trends in music. Classical blues was out, and Swing was now the music of choice. Smith, however, was determined to make a comeback. She began performing again, this time labeling herself as a Swing singer. But before she could re-establish herself as a household name, she passed away from injuries caused by an automobile accident. It was not until some years after her death that her music began to be popularized again. Her recordings with Armstrong became popular among jazz musicians and had great influence on singers such as Billie Holiday, who often listened to Smith's records for inspiration. Frank Sinatra held her in high esteem, and Janis Joplin often emulated Smith's voice in her singing. Bessie Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1939.
Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 to Susan and George Coleman who had a large family in Texas. At the time of Bessie’s birth, her parents had already been married for seventeen years and already had nine children, Bessie was the tenth, and she would later have twelve brothers and sisters. Even when she was small, Bessie had to deal with issues about race. Her father was of African American and Cherokee Indian decent, and her mother was black which made it difficult from the start for her to be accepted. Her parents were sharecroppers and her life was filled with renter farms and continuous labor. Then, when Bessie was two, her father decided to move himself and his family to Waxahacie, Texas. He thought that it would offer more opportunities for work, if he were to live in a cotton town.
All types of music require musicians. In the H.R (Harlem Renaissance), there were many who contributed to this new style of music known as jazz. These musicians all have their own style and form. Each of these styles has in some way influenced the evolution of jazz. Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong is recognized as the most famous trumpet player of this time. His “hot bop” style was heard in places like the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre. Everyone from all over the country would come to see him. Armstrong recorded such works as I’m in the Mood for Love, and You Rascal you (http://library.thinkquest.org/26656/english/music.html). Another famous person during this era was Coleman Hawkins, a saxophone player. Hawkins is recognized as the first great saxophonists of Jazz. His most famous work was a piece named Body and Soul (http://library.thinkquest.org…). Hawkins has also recorded with artists such as Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. Other people such as Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, and “Dizzie” Gillespie have also made many contributions to the development of Jazz.
Singer/actress Lena Horne's primary occupation was nightclub entertaining, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s to the 1990s. In conjunction with her club work, she also maintained a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television. Adding to the challenge of maintaining such a career was her position as an African-American facing discrimination personally and in her profession during a period of enormous social change in the U.S. Her first job in the 1930s was at the Cotton Club, where blacks could perform, but not be admitted as customers; by 1969, when she acted in the film Death of a Gunfighter, her character's marriage to a white man went unremarked in the script. Horne herself was a pivotal figure in the changing attitudes about race in the 20th century; her middle-class upbringing and musical training predisposed her to the popular music of her day, rather than the blues and jazz genres more commonly associated with African-Americans, and her photogenic looks were sufficiently close to Caucasian that frequently she was encouraged to try to "pass" for white, something she consistently refused to do. But her position in the middle of a social struggle enabled her to become a leader in that struggle, speaking out in favor of racial integration and raising money for civil rights causes. By the end of the century, she could look back at a life that was never short on conflict, but that could be seen ultimately as a triumph.
The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as “Lady Day” or “Lady”, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does it’s very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography.
Bessie Smith impacted Billie Holiday because Holiday learned a lot through Smith’s records by thinking that Smith was kind of a teacher. Even though Billie Holiday did not have a voice as powerful as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday’s musical interpretations and phrasing were similar to Bessie Smith. Frank Sinatra was impacted by Bessie Smith because he believed that she was an early blues genius. Sinatra’s voice was more polished than Smith’s voice, but he did find inspiration in the emotions she sang with in the records. Bessie Smith was a highly influential artist that had the power to help people with their music even after her death proving that she truly is “The Empress of Blues” ("Bessie Smith"
This tune became a jazz standard due to its slow harmonic progression that sounds like blues, and Billie’s recording in 1936 is a true example of just that. The low, crawling music begins and drags on, while Billie begins to croon in a completely soulful way. What we see come from Billie in this is complete sincerity in the form of music, and she popularized this song and led it to become number twelve in the U.S. pop charts, further cementing her stardom. Ella recorded her version some time later in 1958, on her and Louis Armstrong’s Porgy and Bess. Again, Ella sings with clear dictation and is able to express her three octave vocal range freely. Her version does not invoke as much gut-wrenching emotion as Billie’s does, nor does it explicitly stick to the pure blues style, but it conveys the story and message as the lullaby that it is. With both Ella and Billie recording their renditions of this opera piece, interest in the opera and with jazz music has continued on.
Nina Simone used music to challenge, provoke, incite, and inform the masses during the period that we know as the Civil Rights Era. In the songs” Four Women”, “Young Gifted and Black”, and Mississippi God Damn”, Nina Simone musically maps a personal "intersectionality" as it relates to being a black American female artist. Kimberly Crenshaw defines "intersectionality" as an inability for black women to separate race, class and gender. Nina Simone’s music directly addresses this paradigm. While she is celebrated as a prolific artist her political and social activism is understated despite her front- line presence in the movement. According to Ruth Feldstein “Nina Simone recast black activism in the 1960’s.” Feldstein goes on to say that “Simone was known to have supported the struggle for black freedom in the United States much earlier, and in a more outspoken manner around the world than had many other African American entertainers.”
At the age of nineteen she met and married Louis Jones. Together they had two children Gail and Teddy (who later died in 1970 from kidney failure). While trying to get used to raising a family and having a career, she received a call from an agent, who had seen her at the Cotton Club, about a part in a movie. Her controlling husband allowed her to be in “The Duke is Tops” and also the musical revue “Blackbirds of 1939."
For many African-Americans, Smith was more than just a blues singer, thanks to an aggressive personality and often-excessive lifestyle. It seemed as if she was describing black culture in the 1920s through her songs. Smith recorded at least 160 songs for Columbia Records from 1923 to 1933. Many of these songs are blues classics. Bessie Smith was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Bessie Smith had a huge voice capable of strength and softness, which she left behind on all her recordings.
Waters' success was related to her style of singing. She could sing like other classic blues singers with plenty of passion and fire, but she had a unique approach. She was not a shouter but was able to hold the attention of the audience with her low and sweet voice. According to Jimmy McPartland, who saw her in the 1927 show Miss Calico, "We were enthralled with her. We liked Bessie Smith very much, too, but Waters had more polish, I guess you'd say. She phrased so wonderfully, the natural quality of her voice was so fine . . ." Waters introduced a new style of the blues, one that was influenced by her grandmother who always told her "You don't have to holler so.
Looking back on the dazzling and male-dominant world of music in the Sixties and Seventies, there stood a petite woman who was especially eye-catching. Janis Joplin, the female icon of the Sixties’ counterculture, conquered millions of audiences with her confidence, sexiness, straightforwardness, hoarse voice, and electrifying on-stage performance. To this day, no one can ever compare with her. She is thus known as the greatest white female rock and blues singer. Not only has her flabbergasting singing style innovated the music in the Sixties and Seventies, Janis Joplin herself is also character with most controversial and interesting characteristics.
Samuel Cornelius Phillips was born in 1923 in Florence, Alabama to a family of tenant farmers (Sam Phillips Obituary. 3) He grew up around the songs of his parent’s, primarily black, coworker’s songs as they were tending to the cotton fields. Phillips said that he “felt an awakening of [his] spirit when [he] heard the singing of African Americans who worked alongside him”. This early exposure to racial equality stuck with him for the rest of his years. When Phillips grew older, he took a job as a disc jockey for an “open format’ radio station (Sam Phillips Bio. 2). He experienced first-hand the reaction of the listeners to black rhythm and blues, and that led him to founding Sun Records. Sam Phillips founded Sun Records in 1952 in the heart of the Memphis black music scene. Sun Records was created in attempt to “develop new and different artists, get freedom in music, and tape people that weren’t getting tapped; despite the boundaries” (Sam Phillips Bio. 5)
Dolly Parton’s life began in Sevier County, Tennessee. She was the fourth of twelve children born to a poor tobacco farmer (Dolly). Even though her family was very poor, that didn’t stop this bubbly little girl from pursuing her dreams. In fact, Dolly was able to turn the struggles that her family encountered into inspirations to her songwriting. One of the very popular songs “Coat of Many Colors” was written by Dolly regarding a true story of her mother sewing a multi-colored coat for her that was made from rags. Not only did Dolly grow up singing and songwriting at home in the family’s rustic one room cabin, she sang in church and by the time she was ten she was performing on local television and radio shows in Knoxville, Tennessee (Dolly). Dolly’s parents saw the gift that their daughter was given and purchased for her a guitar when she was only ten years old. She taught herself how to play and not only sang in the public eye but played the guitar as well. If this wasn’t already an open...
Although Bessie Smith became less popular than she had been, she was still well known and frequently listened to. However, on September 26, 1937, while Smith was on her way to a concert, her companion at the time, Richard Morgan, lost control of their car after sideswiping a truck. Bessie Smith died later that day at a hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi, from her wounds. Bessie Smith influenced many powerful African American artists, such as, Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. Her bold, confident, and persistent personality will forever be remembered and will inspire future generations to
Have you ever had a gift that brought immense joy to whoever heard, saw, or read it? Has there ever been a moment in your life when, while using your gift, you felt truly amazing? For Ella Fitzgerald, her gift was singing. Whether it was singing on her own, or with the Chick Webb band, Ella knew, as did many, that it was her gift. Ella Fitzgerald is considered one of the greatest jazz singers in the history. Her innovative style of singing lifted her to a realm that granted her the title that she is well known by, “The First Lady of Jazz”.