-Caveat Lector-
Prudy,
You are as bigoted as any Klansman that ever rode. You are outright lying
about Bessie Smith and so I think you are also about being "threatened."
But it is not eh first time (Republicans want to take the vote away from
blacks and women--explain the new cabinet! Christians Conservatives know
nothing about the life of Christ and on and on). I usually just ignore it
but this one is such a whopper about a much revered person from my hometown.
Were she here I can assure you she would be the first to tell you that she
did not take abuse from ANYBODY, not even lying liberal people from the oh,
so enlightened North. Your blanket hatred of the south and all things
Southern is your right but you do not have the right to tell lies and spread
this sort of disinformation. I have attacked the bio of Bessie stating that
she was extremely independent and died in a car wreck having nothing to do
with racial issues as you have implied. Remember, the South left and was
reinstated by your heroes such as Sherman who waged war on and starved to
death not armies nor military personnel but thousands of women and children,
the elderly and the infirmed. Your smug implications of moral superiority
are a joke and your knowledge of the South extremely limited and bigoted.
Be that as it may, you will not get away with this lie about Bessie Smith.
See bio below.
Amelia
-Caveat Lector-
In a message dated 01/04/2001 2:39:13 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Prudy,
The man was "pulling your leg," "putting you on." That is Southern for
teasing you. Some of us find it funny that you folks actually believe we
are so bigoted and stupid. They think it reflects rather much on the
person
who "buys" it and their own "soul" or lack thereof. Sort of a verbal
version of taking the Yankees "snipe" hunting. I don't find it amusing but
have watched many people doing it who do.
J2, you left out Bessie Smith! Now there was soul.
Amelia >>
You know, they really used to tease us a lot. I remember once in Georgia
when the White Citizen's Council threatened us because a black guy who
worked
with my husband stopped at our house to help when he saw my husband putting
up a television antenna. The teasing was really skillful. I was just too
stupid to realize I was supposed to laugh.
As for Bessie Smith, she was teased to death, wasn't she? Prudy
Bessie Smith
April 15, 1894 - September 26, 1937
Birthplace: Chattanooga, Tennessee
"St. Louis Blues" (115 k, 10 sec.)
Bessie Smith was the greatest and most influential classic blues singer of
the 1920s. Her full-bodied blues delivery coupled with a remarkable
self-assuredness that worked its way in and around most every note she sang,
plus her sharp sense of phrasing, enabled her to influence virtually every
female blues singer who followed. During her heyday, she sold hundreds of
thousands of records and earned upwards of $2000 per week, which was a
queenly sum in the 1920s. She routinely played to packed houses in the South
as well as the North and Midwest. By the time the decade had ended, Smith
had become the most respected black singer in America and had recorded a
catalog of blues that still stands as the yardstick by which all other
female blues singers are measured.
For many blacks, Smith was more than just a blues singer. Thanks to an
assertive personality and an emancipated, often excessive life-style that
included much drinking, frequent fistfights, wild sexual encounters with
both men and women, and little tolerance of people who aimed to exploit her,
Smith became a black cultural symbol. To many blacks, her success
represented a triumph over white domination in the entertainment business.
She gave hope to oppressed black women and inspired countless other singers.
Smith influenced everyone from Billie Holiday to Mahalia Jackson and Janis
Joplin. Although she died in 1937, still in the prime of her career, she
left behind a legacy that is wonderfully rich and practically unparalleled.
She ranks with the best artists the blues has ever produced.
Bessie Smith was born poor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1894. Before she
had reached womanhood, both her mother and father had died. She was raised
by a sister, Viola, but it was Clarence, her oldest brother, who had the
most influence on young Bessie. A natural showman, Clarence encouraged
Bessie to learn how to sing and dance. After Clarence had joined a traveling
vaudeville show, Smith and another brother, Andrew, began singing and
dancing on Chattanooga street corners, earning pennies from passersby.
With the help of Clarence, who had arranged an audition with the same Moses
Stokes Company for which he'd been working, Bessie began her professional
career in 1912 as a dancer. Eventually Smith became a chorine and then a
featured singer. Since Ma Rainey, the so-called Mother of the Blues, was
also working for the Moses Stokes Company at the time Smith joined the
troupe, many blues historians have theorized that Rainey taught Smith the
basics of the blues and acted as her coach. The revisionist line of
thinking, however, is that by the time she met Rainey, Smith was already
familiar with the blues and had developed much of the vocal charisma that
would later make her a great singer. Certainly it's safe to say that Rainey
had at least some influence on Smith in those early days. Rainey was a
powerful blues vocalist in her own right, and the two singers were known to
be friends. Watching Rainey sing the blues with all the home- grown feeling
that fueled her songs couldn't help but be appreciated by Bessie, who was,
by now, in her late teens.
Smith was an established star with black audiences throughout the South by
the time she moved to Philadelphia in 1921. Two more years would pass before
she began her recording career, however. Shortly after moving to
Philadelphia, Smith supposedly auditioned for Okeh and other record
companies. Each time the talent scouts told her that her voice was "too
rough" to record. Finally, Columbia Records' Frank Walker signed Smith to a
recording contract and set her up in the studio on February 15, 1923.
Nothing survives from Smith's very first recording date. However, on the
following day, Smith, accompanied by Clarence Williams on piano, recorded
"Gulf Coast Blues" and "Down Hearted Blues." The record sold more than
750,000 copies that year, making Smith a blues star on the same level as
Mamie Smith (no relation), a vaudeville singer who had recorded the first
blues song, "Crazy Blues," in 1920.
In all, Smith recorded at least 160 songs for Columbia from 1923 to 1933.
Many of them, such as "Taint Nobody's Bizness If I Do," "Mama's Got the
Blues," her self-penned "Back Water Blues," and "Poor Man's Blues," are
certified blues classics. Not only do they illustrate Smith's firm vocal
grasp of the blues and her ability to evoke deep, soulfully phrased
feelings, but they also tell us much about black culture in the 1920s.
The lyrics to "Taint Nobody's Bizness If I Do" ("If I go to church on
Sunday, I Then just shimmy down on Monday, I 'Tain't nobody's business if I
do, do, do do") and Smith's vocal delivery of them reflected her boldness
and self-determination, two traits much admired by her black fans. On
"Mama's Got the Blues," Smith paid tribute to the virility of black men over
"brown-skinned" ones. Smith wrote "Back Water Blues" after witnessing a
flood destroy homes and property. "Poor Man's Blues" detailed the
differences between the haves and have-nots in America in the 1920s. In the
song Smith pleads to "Mister rich man" to give "the poor man a chance" and
"help stop these hard, hard times."
Throughout the 1920s Smith recorded with a number of noted musicians,
including pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson, cornetist Louis
Armstrong, saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman, and clarinetist
Buster Bailey. Many of her early songs featured only a piano accompaniment,
which allowed sole focus on Smith's vocal dexterity. Yet the songs Smith cut
with Armstrong-among them a rendition of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" and
the ragtime gem "You've Been a Good Old Wagon"- featured the two most
prominent black recording artists of the 1920s working off each other's
talents and attested to the manner in which the best blues vocalists could
sing against a jazz backdrop without losing the simplicity of their Southern
blues roots.
In 1929 Smith recorded the haunting "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and
Out," a tune blues historian William Barlow called Smith's "personal epitaph
and a depression-era classic." Columbia dropped Smith from its roster in
1931, but she did record once more, this time in 1933, under the direction
of talent scout John Hammond. One song that was recorded, "Gimmie a
Pigfoot," included Benny Goodman on clarinet.
Smith continued to perform, mostly in the South, although the classic blues
era was clearly over. Smith's rough-cut brand of the blues had succumbed to
the polished, more mainstream sounds of swing. In 1935, while driving with
friend and lover Richard Morgan through Clarksdale, Mississippi, their auto
struck an oncoming truck. The crash mangled one of Smith's arms and she bled
to death.
Bessie Smith was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980
and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
"St. Louis Blues" is from Legends of the Blues - Volume 1 Copyright © Sony
Music Entertainment Inc., 1991. Accompanied by Louis Armstrong on the cornet
and Fred Longshaw on the reed organ, Bessie originally cut this on January
14, 1925 in New York City.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Check out Bessie's bio from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
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