Bessie Smith
A Poet's Biography of a Blues Legend
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Bessie Smith
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Narrated by:
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Jackie Kay
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Adjoa Andoh
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Written by:
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Jackie Kay
About this listen
A beautiful genre-bending tribute to the larger-than-life blues singer Bessie Smith. Scotland’s National Poet blends poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction to create an entirely unique biography of the Empress of the Blues.
There has never been anyone else like Bessie Smith. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1894 and orphaned by the age of nine, Bessie Smith sang on street corners before becoming a big name in traveling shows. In 1923, she made her first recording for the newly founded Columbia Records. It sold 780,000 copies and catapulted her to fame. Known for her unmatched vocal talent, her timeless and personal blues narratives, her tough persona, and her ability to enrapture audiences with her raw voice, the Empress of the Blues remains a force and an enigma.
In this remarkable book, Kay combines history and personal narrative, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life, and to capture the soul of the woman she first identified with as a young Black girl growing up in Glasgow. Powerful and moving, Bessie Smith is at once a vivid biography of a central figure in American music history and a personal story about one woman’s search for recognition.
A Vintage Original
©2021 Jackie Kay (P)2021 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
"A uniquely lyrical book by an exceptional writer about identity, racism, sexism, and the cultural life of a complicated, profoundly influential blueswoman.” (Booklist)
“Eloquent and emotive.... Bessie Smith remains an act of intimate witnessing, a biography about a black, bisexual, working-class American artist by a celebrated Scottish poet who first recognized her own blackness and queerness in Smith’s songs, her wild mythos and 'beautiful black face.'” (The Guardian)
“Growing up black in an all-white neighbourhood in Glasgow in the Seventies, Jackie Kay (now the national poet of Scotland) found in Bessie Smith an idol, a comfort and a friend. Kay mixes personal reflection and biography, lyrics and prose, to tell the story of how the Empress of the Blues went from an orphan singing for nickels in Tennessee, to selling 780,000 copies of her debut record, to dying in a much-mythologised car crash in 1937, aged 43. The original was published in 1997 but this reprint, with a new introduction by the author, hasn't dated a day.” (The New Statesman)