Bessie (Revised and expanded ed.)

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by Chris Albertson

Yale University Press

Due/Published June 2003, 288 pages, cloth

ISBN 0300099029

Originally published in 1971, this definitive biography of Bessie Smith has been revised and expanded.

Considered by many to be the greatest blues singer of all time, Bessie Smith was also a successful vaudeville entertainer who became the highest paid African-American performer of the roaring twenties. This book--a revised and expanded edition of the classic biography of this extraordinary artist--debunks many of the myths that have circulated since her untimely death in 1937.

Chris Albertson writes about the singer's personal life and her career, supplementing his historical research with dozens of interviews with her relatives, friends, and associates, in particular Ruby Walker Smith, a niece by marriage who toured with Bessie for over a decade. For this new edition he includes more details of Bessie's early years, new interview material, and a chapter devoted to events and responses that followed the original publication in 1971.