Personalities | Mamie Smith | Twenties | Jazz & Blues
(Vocals, 1883–1946)
Mamie Smith’s first recording session, for OKeh in 1920, resulted in a pair of nondescript pop songs, but her manager Perry Bradford then talked the label into recording her as a blues singer. On 10 August 1920, fronting a band dubbed the Jazz Hounds – featuring stride pianist Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith (no relation) and possibly also cornettist Johnny Dunn – Smith cut the first record ever billed as a ‘blues’: ‘Crazy Blues’. It sold upwards of a million copies, and in support she toured with a flamboyant show that featured trapeze artists, comedians, dancers and other embellishments from her vaudeville past.
Despite her horn-like vocal timbre and emotional delivery, Smith was not really a blues singer: her rhythmic sense was pedestrian, her intonation stiff. But ‘Crazy Blues’ virtually defined the genre – at least as a recorded popular music – for a generation of women vocalists who followed, each one of whom came in through the door that Mamie Smith had opened.
Styles & Forms | Twenties | Jazz & Blues
Personalities | Pine Top Smith | Twenties | Jazz & Blues
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.