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Rating: One might begin on a sweltering August day, in a remote cemetery on the edge of Darby Creek, where Pennsylvania and New Jersey overlook the Delaware River. It is 1970. A solemn Janis Joplin pays homage with a brand new headstone to what she calls "the greatest blues singer of all time", not knowing that, in just a few months, she would join her in a tragic end.
Fate sometimes plays cynically, and in the case of an America at the center of the last century, it prematurely elevates its leading actors to the status of a legend.
Bessie Smith was one of these.
But she was by no means the goddess raised above the common people and indifferent to events: she was the spirit of her time, touched by the experiences of her world to the core, experiencing firsthand the paradoxes of a nation entering the twenty-first century.
The blue, from George Colman to the spirituals of black Americans, is the color of the melancholic, of the suffering. The blue devil that gripped Bessie Smith was perhaps the same one that looked Robert Johnson straight in the eyes, waiting patiently on some street in the deep south.
Like a star rocketing across the celestial arc at a mad pace, shining with a light too intense to allow her to live long, Bessie Smith knew how to seize that leading role that would accompany her throughout the 1920s. The golden era of Blues and Jazz will forever be grateful to her. Capable of influencing a generation of singers who will make history in the years to come (including Janis Joplin herself along with Billie Holiday, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, to name just a few), this voice from Tennessee managed to establish herself as a unmatched bastion in expressing the most bittersweet and elegant blues that exists.
She began performing as early as 1913, although success came with the early 1920s recordings, including a version of "Downhearted Blues" from 1923 (the year Smith signed with Columbia). This track opens the collection under review, almost serving as a forerunner to Smith's golden period. It would still be difficult not to mention all sixteen tracks of this 1989 collection. "'Tain't Nobody's Bizness if I do" is of disarming beauty, "St. Louis Blues" (a traditional performed in duet with Louis Armstrong) descends gently to touch the most intimate and hidden chords, "Gimme A Pigfoot" requires no words to describe it. Every single track attests to an incomparable aesthetic fascination, a document of an era that sounds distant yet still stands unchallenged against anything that comes close to it. A very special mention should go to "Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out", a track from her later period. In a few words: the synthesis of perfect composition, the precious gem that everyone will want to emulate in the future, yet remains unchallenged to mark an unattainable path.
The collection presented here, despite its admirable capacity for synthesis, omits some of Smith's best pieces. Tracks such as "Safety Mama", "Take it Right Back", "After You're Gone", and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" should definitely be retrieved. Nonetheless, this collection adequately conveys the sound of an era thanks to a voice that, in every single nuance, manages to give the sensation of the sublime, of the unreachable (as perhaps only Etta James in "At Last" will manage to do later).
The crisis of '29 unfortunately led to the closure of many venues where Jazz and Blues had made their fortune. As a consequence, the light by which Bessie Smith shone gradually dimmed, following a tumultuous descent that would lead to her tragic death in September 1937. Bessie Smith left this world after a troubled life, tested repeatedly by the adversities surrounding her.
She died like a star, leaving a glow destined to spread for years, like an immovable bastion.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do (03:31)
There ain't nothing I can do, or nothing I can say
That folks don't criticize me
But I'm goin' to, do just as I want to anyway
And don't care if they all despise me
If I should take a notion
To jump into the ocean
'T ain't nobody's bizness if I do, do, do do
If I go to church on Sunday
Sing the shimmy down on Monday
Ain't nobody's bizness if I do, if I do
If my friend ain't got no money
And I say "take all mine, honey"
'T ain't nobody's bizness if I do, do, do do
If I give him my last nickel
And it leaves me in a pickle
'T ain't nobody's bizness if I do, if I do
There are _________________ would hit me
Since _______________up and quit me
'T ain't nobody's bizness if I do, do, do do
I swear I won't call no copper
If I'm beat up by my poppa
'T ain't nobody's bizness if I do, if I do
05 St. Louis Blues (03:12)
I hate to see that evening sun go down
I hate to see that evening sun go down
'Cause, my baby, he's gone left this town
Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today
If I'm feelin' tomorrow like I feel today
I'll pack my truck and make my give-a-way
St. Louis woman with her diamond ring
Pulls that man around by her
If it wasn't for her and her
That man I love would have gone nowhere, nowhere
I got the St. Louis Blues
Blues as I can be
That man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea
Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me
I love my baby like a school boy loves his pie
Like a Kentucky colonel loves his mint'n rye
I love my man till the day I die
by W.C. Handy
15 Do Your Duty (03:29)
If I cal three times a day baby
Come and drive my blue away
When you come,be ready to play
Do your duty
If you want to have some love
Give your baby your last buck
Don't come quackin' like a duck
Do your duty
I heard you said you didn't love me,baby
Dowm at Mrs.Brown
I don't believe a word she said
She's the lyinest woman in town
Oh babe,when I need attention at home
I'll just call you on the telephone
Come yourself,don't send your friend Jones
Do your duty
If my radiator gets too hot
Cool it off in lots of spots
Give me all the service you've got
Do your duty
If you don't know what it's all about
Don't sit around my house and pout
If you do you'll cath your mama tippin' now
Do your duty
If you make your own bed hard
That's the way it lies
I'm tired of sleepin' by myself
But you're too dumb to realize
I'm not tryin' to make you feel blue
I'm not satisfied with the way you do
I've got to help you find somebody too
Do your duty
Do your duty
16 Gimme a Pigfoot (03:31)
"Up in Harlem every Saturday night
When the highbrows get together its just so right
They all congregate at an all night hop
And what they do is Oo Bop Bee Dap
Oh Hannah Brown from way cross town
Gets full of coin and starts breaking 'em down
And at the break of day
You can hear ol' Hannah say
'Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.
Send me again. I don't care.
I feel just like I wanna clown.
Give the piano player a drink because he's bringing me down!
He's gotta rhyme, yeah! When he stomps his feet.
He sends me right off to sleep.
Check all your razors and your guns.
We gonna be arrested when the wagon comes.
I wanna pigfoot and a bottle of beer.
Send me cause I don't care.
Blame me cause I don't care.
Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.
Send me again, I don't care.
I feel just like I wanna clown.
Give the piano player a drink because he's bringing me down.
He's got rhyme, Yeah, when he stomps his feet.
He sends me right off to sleep.
Check all your razors and your guns.
Do the Shim-Sham Shimmy 'til the rising sun.
Give me a reaper and a gang of gin.
Play me cause I'm in my sin.
Blame me cause I'm full of gin.'"
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