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All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues. San Francisco, California: Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-736-6. Harrison, Daphne Duval (1990). Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers. ISBN 0-8135-1280-8. Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray.
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues . Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded.
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age.Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s.
Mamie Smith (née Robinson; May 26, 1891 [1] – August or September 16, 1946) was an American singer. As a vaudeville singer, she performed in multiple styles, including jazz and blues. In 1920, she entered blues history as the first African-American artist to make vocal blues recordings.
[42] [43] Notable Black female blues singers who started on the Vaudeville stage included Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, Mamie Smith, Mamie Brown, Ida Cox, and Edmonia Henderson. [44] Another venue for up-and-coming musicians and performers was the circus sideshow. [45]
Here's how Mamie Smith paved the way for Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Beyoncé and more of your favorite Black female recording artists.
"These pioneering female performers had an impact on the manner in which blues singing was introduced on the black vaudeville stage by the blues women of the 1910s and 20s. Hines' male impersonations provided the standard against which African American comediennes were compared for decades.
Classic female blues [46] Katherine Henderson: 1909 Unknown: Missouri Classic female blues [47] Edna Hicks: 1895 1925 Louisiana Classic female blues [48] Son House: 1902 1988 Mississippi Delta blues [49] Peg Leg Howell: 1888 1966 Georgia Country blues [50] Alberta Hunter: 1895 1984 Tennessee Classic female blues [51] Mississippi John Hurt: 1894 ...