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Biography: Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith born in a Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1894. Died 1935.
Through Bessie Smith, the blues were raised to an artform that was to be the hallmark for every woman blues singer who recorded during the 1920's.
Smith's songs covered many of the same themes as did Ma Rainey's; she could sing about violence or the threat of prison without any hint of tears or remorse, or lonliness and abandonment with a wrenching mournfulness.
Her blues emanated from the violence and complexities of the urban experience and its effect on black women. Smith's blues were the essence of "sadness...not softned with tears, but hardened with laughter, the absurd, incongruous laughter of a sadness without even a god to appeal to."
You can send me up the river, or send me to that mean ole jail'
You can send me up the river, or send me to that mean ole jail,
I killed my man and I don't need no bail.
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