Bessie Smith started her singing career on the street corner with her brother Andrew. Bessie was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee to poor parents both of whom were dead by the time she was nine years old.

Try again later. These are the kind of roads Bessie Smith's car was on when it crashed north of Clarksdale, and they don't look much different today. Share this memorial using social media sites or email. Also an additional 2 volunteers within fifty miles. Please note: You are asking volunteers to find and take a photo of the headstone. Quickly see who the memorial is for and when they lived and died and where they are buried. A Blues Trail smartphone app makes it easy to navigate between sites like the B.B. All photos appear on this tab and here you can update the sort order of photos on memorials you manage. Sorry! She appeared on Broadway in the musical Pansy (critics at the time said she was its only asset).
Oops, some error occurred while uploading your photo(s). Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. We do not have any photo volunteers within fifty miles of your requested photo location. In the early 1920's Colombia records started a race records division and Bessie debuted with "Downhearted Blues" and "Gulf Coast Blues", which sold 780,000 copies in six months. If a new volunteer signs up in your requested photo location, they may see your existing request and take the photo. Over at the Riverside, there's another sign hanging up, a stylized portrait on metal marked "Bessie Smith." Your account has been locked for 30 minutes due to too many failed sign in attempts. Make sure that the file is a photo. After all, black women like Bessie were the first stars of recorded blues, garnering fame and fortune with plainspoken songs from a point of view that had historically been silenced to the extreme. Oops, something didn't work. Your new password must contain one or more uppercase and lowercase letters, and one or more numbers or special characters. Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person. Gussow pointed out that in 1999, city officials had declared the intersection to be the crossroads of mythology, where Robert Johnson had allegedly dealt with the devil in exchange for his talent. Verify and try again. If you notice a problem with the translation, please send a message to feedback@findagrave.com and include a link to the page and details about the problem. But she places herself firmly in the tradition of the blues, reaching back over more than a hundred years to connect to kindred spirits like Bessie Smith.

We and our partners will store and/or access information on your device through the use of cookies and similar technologies, to display personalised ads and content, for ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Smith, interviewed for a 1969 Esquire magazine article, “The True Death of Bessie Smith,” also said that she was too badly injured to be saved. The Nashville-based singer Adia Victoria was one of the headliners of the Deep Blues Festival in Clarksdale in 2018; in her early 30s, she's a genre-shifting experimentalist who mines goth and punk sounds and electronic effects in her work.

Bessie was killed in an automobile accident between Memphis and Clarksdale Mississippi while traveling between concert appearances. Blues Musician. Try again. Failed to remove flower. ", A more recent resolution from the Mississippi statehouse, celebrating this year's 40th anniversary of the library exhibit that would become the Delta Blues Museum, doubled down, formally (if tongue-in-cheek — the co-sponsor of the resolution is State Rep. Orlando Paden, the son of the owner of Red's, one of Clarksdale's most beloved juke joints) declaring the spot "the location where the legend Blues Musician Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil for the ability to play a mean guitar.".

resolution from the Mississippi statehouse. Remove advertising from a memorial by sponsoring it for just $5. And it's a strange landscape, if you take 61 or 49 instead of the interstate. Previously sponsored memorials or famous memorials will not have this option. I thought you might like to see a memorial for Bessie Smith I found on Findagrave.com. She had an arm nearly severed and due to blood loss was in shock. To add a flower, click the “Leave a Flower” button.

Try again later. You may not upload any more photos to this memorial, This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has 20 photos, This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded 5 photos to this memorial, This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has 30 photos, This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded 20 photos to this memorial. Your password must be at least 8 characters, Please check the I'm not a robot checkbox, If you want to be a Photo Volunteer you must enter a ZIP Code or select your location on the map. Close this window, and upload the photo(s) again. Bessie appeared is one film a two-reeler based on W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." (Two years later, when the Clarksdale-born actor Morgan Freeman opened the Ground Zero blues nightclub down the street, it got the address of Zero Blues Alley). based on information from your browser.