Episode Details

Bessie Smith was the highest-paid Black entertainer in America during the 1920s, selling millions of records and commanding enormous fees. She died after a car accident in Mississippi in 1937, and for decades her grave went unmarked because no one would pay for a headstone.

This episode follows Smith from her childhood as an orphan in Chattanooga through her reign as the Empress of the Blues, her struggles with alcoholism and the Great Depression, and the long campaign to give her a proper memorial.

• She was the highest-paid Black performer in the 1920s, earning up to $2,000 per week
• Her grave went unmarked for over thirty years until Janis Joplin helped fund a headstone in 1970
• She recorded nearly 200 songs for Columbia Records between 1923 and 1933
• Her vocal style influenced virtually every female blues and jazz singer who followed her