Bessie Smith, Valerie Simpson Getty Images/NPR hide caption
Bessie Smith Bessie Smith artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music
Bessie Smith
Turning the Tables at Lincoln Center NPR hide caption
Turning The Tables: Celebrating Eight Women Who Invented American Popular Music
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Turning The Tables: Celebrating Eight Women Who Invented American Popular Music
The Blair House Collective reads poems for Turning the Tables NPR hide caption
Bessie Smith on stage with her band in Philadelphia, Penn. Smith infused her performances with glamour whether she was performing in cities or for rural audiences in settings that evoked minstrelsy. Anthony Barboza/Getty Images hide caption
A sign marks an intersection of Highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale, Miss. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption
Romare Bearden, Empress of the Blues. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in part through the Luisita L. and Frank H. Denghausen Endowment hide caption
Bessie Smith poses for a portrait circa 1925. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images hide caption
Blues singer Bessie Smith poses for a portrait circa 1925 in New York City. Edward Elcha/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images hide caption
Turning The Tables: 8 Women Who Invented American Popular Music Chelsea Beck for NPR hide caption
In her music, Bessie Smith — known as the "Empress Of The Blues" — communicated the kind of outward urgency and inner stillness that often signals the telling of an absolute truth. Carl Van Vechten Photograph Collection/Library of Congress hide caption
Queen Latifah plays blues singer Bessie Smith in the HBO movie Bessie. Frank Masi/Courtesy of HBO hide caption
Bessie Smith, "The Empress of the Blues," gave voice the listeners' tribulations and yearnings of the 1920s and '30s. Bettmann/Corbis hide caption
A flight of beers to accompany some musical flights of fancy. iStock hide caption
In 1926, everyone did the Charleston on ice. Scherl/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/The Image Works hide caption
Sheet music for W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." Wikimedia Commons hide caption
Bessie Smith, shown here ca. 1935, remained an active performer until her sudden death at age 43. Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption
Bessie Smith: 'The Essential Bessie Smith'
Bessie Smith (circa 1894 - 1937), known as the Empress of the Blues. Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption