Mamie Smith

Though technically not really a blues performer, Mamie Smith notched her put in place American music because the 1st black feminine singer to record a vocal blues. That record was “Crazy Blues” (documented August 10, 1920), which offered a million copies in its 1st half a year and produced record labels alert to the large potential marketplace for “competition records”; therefore paving just how for Bessie Smith (no connection) along with other blues and jazz performers. An entertainer who sported a robust, penetrating, feminine tone of voice with belting vaudeville characteristics, instead of blues inflections, Smith toured like a dancer with Tutt-Whitney’s Wise Set Organization in her early teenagers, and sang in Harlem night clubs before World Battle I. Evidently, Smith’s pioneering documenting session was a major accident, since she was completing for Sophie Tucker, however the success from the record produced her wealthy. Quickly thereafter, Smith started touring and documenting with a music group known as the Jazz Hounds, which presented such jazz notables as Coleman Hawkins, Bubber Miley, Johnny Dunn, and much more, and she toured using the rings of Andy Kirk and Body fat Pichon within the 1930s. She also made an appearance in several movies, including Heaven in Harlem past due in her lifestyle (1939). She documented several edges for OKeh during her heyday; one unissued consider of “My Sportin’ Guy” is roofed on Columbia’s Root base N’ Blues Retrospective 1925-1950 container set. Within the 1980s, most of her recordings had been reissued on LP with the imported Record label.