Blues Empress in Black Chattanooga: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South

218 Pages·2008·2.31 MB·English

by  Michelle R. Scott

BLACK STUDIES / AMERICAN HISTORY
BLUES EEEMMMPPPRRREEESSSSSS
“An important, new retrospective on the life and community in which renowned S BESSIE SMITH and the Emerging Urban South
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blues singer Bessie Smith was raised. Scott provides an excellent account of
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the dynamics of race, sex, and material wealth in Tennessee as it developed t
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into a pivotal transportation and manufacturing region in the postwar South.
Especially fascinating are Smith’s move into vaudeville and other little-known
aspects of her popularity and showmanship, which occurred long before Smith
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signed with Columbia Records and recorded her fi rst hit. A model for popular L
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culture courses, this book will also be useful in American studies, American E
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history, African American studies, sociology, and women’s studies classes.”

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M iinn BBllaacckk CChhaattttaannooooggaa
—Daphne Duval Harrison
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author of Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s
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s one of the fi rst African American vocalists to be recorded, Bessie Smith I
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is a prominent fi gure in American popular culture and African American
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history. Michelle R. Scott uses Smith’s life as a lens to investigate broad issues L
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in history, including industrialization, Southern rural to urban migration, black C
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community development in the post-emancipation era, and black working-

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class gender conventions.
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Arguing that the rise of blues culture and the success of female blues artists T
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like Bessie Smith are connected to the rapid migration and industrialization in A
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the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scott focuses her analysis
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on Chattanooga, Tennessee, the large industrial and transportation center O
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where Smith was born. This study explores how the expansion of the Southern
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railroads and the development of iron foundries, steel mills, and sawmills
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created vast employment opportunities in the postbellum era. Chronicling the ndE
growth and development of the African American Chattanooga community, thSS
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Scott examines the Smith family’s migration to Chattanooga and the popular EmE S
music of black Chattanooga during the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, erM
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and culminates by delving into Smith’s early years on the vaudeville circuit. inT
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MICHELLE R. SCOTT an
is an assistant professor of history at the University of S
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Maryland, Baltimore County. ut
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Cover design: Kelly Gray
Cover photographs: Bessie Smith (Samuel DeVincent Illustrated Sheet Music Collection, Archives
Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution); photograph of Chattanooga
and Missionary Ridge taken from Cameron Hill (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division,
Detroit Publishing Company Collection, LC-D4-10637).
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ISBN 978-0-252-07545-2 L
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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS I
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O Michelle R. Scott
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Urbana and Chicago www.press.uillinois.edu S
Blues empress
in bl ack chat tanooga
Blues empress
i n b l a c k c h a t t a n o o g a
Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South
michelle r. scott
University of illinois Press
Urbana and Chicago
© 2008 by Michelle R. Scott
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scott, Michelle R.
Blues empress in black Chattanooga : Bessie Smith
and the emerging urban South / Michelle R. Scott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-252-03338-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-252-03338-8 (cloth : alk paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-252-07545-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-252-07545-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Smith, Bessie, 1894–1937. 2. Singers—United States—
Biography. 3. Blues (Music)—Tennessee—Chattanooga—
History and criticism. 4. African Americans—Tennessee—
Chattanooga—History. 5. Chattanooga (Tenn.)—History.
I. Title.
ml420.s667s36 2008
782.421643092—dc22 [b] 2007052615
For my grandmothers,
Ruth leach and Marion nixon Vincent,
and
My parents,
Edgar and caryl Scott

contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction:
Uncovering the Life of a Blues Woman 1
1. Beyond the Contraband Camps:
Black Chattanooga from the Civil War to 1880 11
2. “The Freest Town on the Map”:
Black Migration to New South Chattanooga 35
3. The Empress’s Playground:
Bessie Smith and Black Childhood in the Urban South 55
4. Life on “Big Ninth” Street:
The Emerging Blues Culture in Chattanooga 81
5. An Empress in Vaudeville:
Bessie Smith on the Theater Circuit 113
Epilogue:
A Blues Woman’s Legacy 135
Notes 139
Bibliography 173
Index 193

preface
“What do you know about the blues?” and “Why are you interested
in Bessie Smith?” are questions I was repeatedly asked as I embarked upon
my study of Bessie Smith and Chattanooga several years ago. As a child of
the 1970s and 1980s and a native of the West Coast, my passion for the story
of a southern woman who sang the blues in the 1920s apparently seemed out
of place in a time when America’s popular music genres included hip-hop
and “neo-soul” music.
I first learned of Bessie Smith as a high-school student, when I listened to
the scratchy albums my mother had purchased when she studied blues music
in college. I was intrigued by the sketch on the cover of a voluptuous black
woman lounging on a chaise in a beaded gown with feathers in her hair and
was even more amused by the titles of the songs that spoke of pigfeet, bottles
of beer, and a “kitchen man.” Yet I cannot say that I knew anything about the
blues until I really listened to the Bessie Smith tune, “Lost Your Head Blues,”
when I was in my own undergraduate jazz history courses. Aside from some
B. B. King songs and a parody performance of a wizened old bluesman on
the 1990s television variety show “In Living Color,” my blues consciousness
had been nearly nonexistent. Yet as I heard the words, “I was with you baby
when you didn’t have a dime / Once ain’t for always and two ain’t but twice,”
powerfully belted out without the aid of modern amplification, I realized that
the blues was not so far removed from the rhythm-and-blues and popular
songs being played on the radio at the time. I felt what Bessie was saying, and
her strong vocal delivery stayed in my consciousness. Bessie Smith did not
have a “pretty” voice like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but her emotional