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It is best known as the former black hospital where Bessie Smith, the greatest blueswoman, died following a car crash in 1937.
ECONOMIST: Letter from the Mississippi Delta: The rebirth of the blues | The
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The two performances by Bessie Smith may puzzle devotees both come from her somewhat rough-voiced sessions in the 1930s, instead of her majestic work in the 1920s.
ECONOMIST: Jazz singers
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It was even more popular and influential than its predecessor and it went on to become a jazz standard played by musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and, the queen of 1920s blues, Bessie Smith.
BBC: WC Handy's Memphis Blues: The Song of 1912
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In the early part of the 20th century, when people began to move off the farm and into town, they wanted to listen to Bessie Smith on their new Victrola, and they wanted to go out for a Saturday night dinner and a movie.
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Bessie Smith's version of St Louis Blues was even filmed in a kind of predecessor of today's music videos - she acts out the part of a woman knocked to the ground by a two-timing boyfriend, and then moves to a bar to sing the blues.
BBC: WC Handy's Memphis Blues: The Song of 1912