Bessie Smith's Blues: A Playlist

Bessie Smith. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1936.

Bessie Smith recorded her first song "Cemetery Blues" ninety-three years ago. Her ribald tales of good times and regret built Columbia Records into a powerhouse music label. Smith's powerful and plaintive voice gave her songs a particularly clear and visceral resonance that still touches listeners today. The tempo of early Blues is slow by contemporary standards, but her songs are incredibly fresh. People still fall in love and make a mess of romantic entanglements today like they have for thousands of years. In the decades since her death, some of her hits have been recorded by artists including Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Bobby Womack, and Van Halen.

Bessie Smith and her Blues singing contemporaries along with the female stars of Pre Code Hollywood films, were among the few women who openly expressed sexual desire in art forms enjoyed by mass audiences nationwide in the early 20th century. The frankness of the Blues provided riveting social commentary on the changing sexual, gender and political mores of the time. Straddling the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression, Bessie Smith's music was a soundtrack of the complex black experiences born of the Great Migration.

It is easy to dip into Ms. Smith's music and become enamored with her. The highs of love and the depths of loneliness and despair have been a constant in human experience. Smith's catalog lends itself to be mixed and matched to create a playlist to suit almost any mood. The following songs follow the story arc of a woman who has lived the high life of good booze and fine men and found herself destitute and alone. Bessie Smith's music is Blues at its finest, passion and pathos in song.

Koko Taylor knows the way

I am a recent and fervent convert to the cult of Koko Taylor. She is magnificent. Koko Taylor is the personification of confidence and affirmations to live life to the fullest. In her songs of lamentation for a love affair gone wrong there is resolve and ultimately, triumph. She is Koko Taylor, she sings the Blues, and you are better for having basked in the glory of her down-home, rock-steady vocals. There is no retreat and there is no surrender when with Koko Taylor. If the spirit of Koko and the band hits you just the right way, where and when you need it, there is transcendence. In my understanding of Koko Taylor’s music right now, her songs give me the sense of a glorious summer gathering. It is late in the day, the sun is still shining with vigor and a light breeze is rustling the leaves of the shade trees. There is talk and laughter and the hint of the unexpected in the air. Libations are in hand. Good friends are in the midst of reverie. As of my baptism in the healing waters of Koko Taylor Chicago Blues, these are my favorite songs so far: