One last video to celebrate Pride Month, though I’m late posting it.
Bessie Smith, one of the most popular and prolific of the early blues singers of the 1920s, was known, like her mentor Ma Rainey, to be bisexual.
She was also reportedly “quite religious” and would often attend Sunday morning services while on tour. Drummer Zutty Singleton once said that Bessie “was real close to God, Very religious.”
Her music often took on the characteristic of preaching, and here, in her original composition, “Preachin’ the Blues”, Ms. Smith lays down a sermon for her flock of faithful:
“I will learn you something if you listen to this song.
I ain’t here to try to save your soul
Just want to teach you how to save your good jelly roll.”
Angela Davis argues, in her excellent book, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, that this song “juxtaposes the spriit of religion and the spirit of the blues, and contests the idea of the incontrovertible separateness of these two spheres.”
Smith’s song combines the evangelical spirit of her religious upbringing with the worldly pleasures of the blues lifestyle. The song “advises women to take control of their sexuality and implicitly challenges the church’s condemnation of sexuality.”
This open celebration and affirmation of sexuality, given in the context of blasphemously “preaching” a “sermon”, was quite radical and progressive for this time period. It was, as a teenage friend of mine in the 80s would have called it, “totally punk rock”.
We owe Bessie Smith and other bisexual female blues singers of the 1920s a debt of gratitude for their courage to sing their authentic truth to the world.
Once more: Happy Pride Month! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ I didn’t get to explore as many artists as I had planned – but as the month progressed, I found myself out celebrating Pride and neglecting the channel. That’s ok – that leaves more artists to feature next year!
Recorded in New York City on February 17, 1927.
Released as Columbia 14195-D
Credits:
Bessie Smith – vocals
James P. Johnson – piano
Sources:
Bessie, Chris Albertson, Yale University Press, 2003
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Y. Davis, Pantheon, 1998
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