The Collection

by

Bessie Smith

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"The Collection" is an outstanding introductory set to Bessie Smith's music and legend and to the basics of blues and pop songwriting.

Smith blazed a trail others tragically followed throughout the century: hard-partying, victimized singer (usually female) lays soul bare in the music before dying tragically and mysteriously (Edward Albee's 1959 play and the Band's tribute song "Bessie Smith" play to her legend.) You see the results here in intimate, jazz-tinted blues like "'Taint Nobody's Bizness If I Do," "Empty Bed Blues," "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle," and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out" (recorded months before 1929's stock market crash). These were truly "alternative" pop songs years before that term; assertive, angry songs a woman sang less than 10 years after women's suffrage (let alone amidst the racism rampant in 1920s society.)

These songs and Smith's powerful, wailing vocals are still haunting 70 years later. When, in "Young Woman Blues," Smith sings, "Some people call me a hobo, some people call me a bum/nobody knows my name, nobody knows what I've done," she ironically anticipates the legends of Jimmy Rodgers, Billie Holiday, Hank Williams, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, and two generations' songwriters and musicians whose personal lonliness and pain, musically stated, comforted and saved many after their deaths.

The restoration from the original metal and shellac masters is extraordinary, especially considering lesser quality on other titles in Columbia's "Jazz Masters" series. Yet despite this, and legendary help from the era's biggest stars (Louis Armstrong, Jack Teegarden, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman) it's Bessie Smith's pain and joy-filled vocals, which root all personal expression in popular music, that makes "Collection" musically enjoyable, historically rich, and exceptionally essential.