At first glance one would think this is just an advertisement for Okeh Race Records because of the banner at the top. But once you see names like Helen Gross and the Choo Choo Jazzers, ( with a 17000 catalogue number) appear, you know you’ve stumbled upon a rare find. The George M. Wood record store of Pittsburgh claimed to be a pioneer in dealing with race records, and sponsored this advertisement, found in the September 6, 1924 Pittsburgh Courier.
A master of the boogie woogie style of blues piano, Clarence “Pinetop” Smith recorded for the Vocalion label in 1928 and 1929. His style was the essance of ragtime and influenced many future pieces in that style. Vocalion advertised record number 1245 in The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland, on April 6, 1929.
Blues singers Victoria Spivey and Lonnie Johnson recording of “Furniture Man Blues” Parts 1 and 2 are announced by the Okeh Phonograph Company in the February 9, 1929 edition of The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland. They are backed up by Clarence Williams on piano.
Okeh Records announces Louis Armstrong’s latest recordings, “Tight Like This”, and “It’s Tight Like That”, in this photographic advertisement of Louis. The ad was placed in The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland on January 26, 1929.
Okeh Race Records announces that Lonnie Johnson and Victoria Spivey are together to sing the Blues, the “Toothache Blues. Okeh inserted their advertisement in the January 4, 1930 edition of The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland.
Paramount Race Records heralded Blind Blake’s famous piano sounding guitar as simply amazing, in his latest recording, “Dry Bone Shuffle.” This advertisement was inserted in The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland, on May 28, 1927.
Columbia records promotes blues singer Clara Smith latest recording of “Whip It To A Jelly” in this race series advertisement from The Afro-American newspaper, Baltimore, Maryland. This was taken from the August 28, 1926 edition .
Another gem from February 15, 1930, is this Vocalion Race Record for Tampa Red and Georgia Tom. Again the source is The Afro-American newspaper, Baltimore, Maryland.
”Lost Letter Blues” sung by Lillian Glinn is the theme of this November 3, 1928 Columbia Race Records advertisement in The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland.
Okeh Race Races put this somewhat humorous advertisement in the March 24, 1928 edition of The Afro-American, Baltimore, Maryland, in order to promote Blue Belle’s recording of “Boa Constrictor Blues”.
The Carl Company of Schenectady, New York, in conjunction with Victor Records, attempted to make known that they had their latest blues recording artists out on six new 19000 series records, in the July 9, 1923 edition of the Schenectady Gazette.
Blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson’s latest Okeh Race Record advertisement of “Kansas City Blues”, parts I & II, was taken from the Afro-American, February 4, 1928.
Columbia Records Race series advertisement from 1927, promoting “Back-Water Blues”, sung by Bessie Smith.
| W. C. Handy | |
|---|---|
In July 1941, by Carl Van Vechten
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | William Christopher Handy |
| Also known as | The Father of Blues |
| Born | November 16, 1873 Florence, Alabama, U.S. |
| Origin | Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Died | March 28, 1958 (aged 84) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Genres | Blues, Jazz |
| Occupations | Composer, songwriter, musician,bandleader, author |
| Instruments | Piano, cornet, trumpet, guitar,vocals |
| Years active | 1893–1948 |
William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the “Father of the Blues”.
Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.
Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers.
English: W. C. Handy, age 19. Photo courtesy of University of North Alabama, Collier Library. Photographer unknown. Русский: Уильям Кристофер Хэнди в возрасте 19 лет (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
W.C. Handy at age 19
Handy was born in Florence, Alabama. His father was thepastor of a small church in Guntersville, another small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in the log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal(AME) minister after emancipation. The log cabin of Handy’s birth has been saved and preserved in downtown Florence.
Growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking andplastering.
Handy was a deeply religious man, whose influences in his musical style were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth, and in the natural world. He later cited the sounds of nature, such as “whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises”, the sounds of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and “the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art” as inspiration.
Handy’s father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents’ permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries, nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, “What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?” Ordering Handy to “Take it back where it came from”, his father quickly enrolled him in organ lessons. Handy’s days as an organ student were short lived, and he moved on to learn the cornet. Handy joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.
He worked on a “shovel brigade” at the McNabb furnace, and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore. “With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable…It was better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated.” He wrote, “Southern Negroes sang about everything…They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect…” He would later reflect that, “In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues”
In September 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily, and gained a teaching job in the city. Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found industrial work at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.
During his off-time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. Later, Handy organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World’s Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World’s Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis but found working conditions very bad.
After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana, where he helped introduce the blues. He played cornet in the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. In Evansville, Handy joined a successful band that performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist andtrumpeter.
At age 23, Handy became band master of Mahara’s Colored Minstrels. In their three-year tour, they traveled to Chicago, throughoutTexas and Oklahoma, through Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, and on to Cuba. Handy earned a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba, the band traveled north through Alabama, and stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife Elizabeth decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.
In 1896 while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married shortly afterward on July 19, 1896. She had Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900 after they had settled in Florence, Alabama, his hometown. Henderson’s W.C. Handy Music Bar B Q and Blues Festival is held annually in June. There is also a 10 day, 200 event W.C. Handy Music Festival in Handy’s hometown of Florence, Alabama annually the last week of July. http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org
W.C. Handy, ca. 1900, Director of the Alabama Agriculture & Mechanical College Band
Around that time, William Hooper Councill, President of Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (AAMC) (today named Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University) in Normal, Alabama, recruited Handy to teach music at the college. Handy became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902.
His enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to European classical music, was part of his development. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be “classical”. Handy felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.
In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, where he listened to the various black popular musical styles. The state was mostly rural, and music was part of the culture, especially of the Mississippi Delta cotton plantation areas. Musicians usually played the guitar, banjo and to a much lesser extent, the piano. Handy’s remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music heard in his travels.
After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels and tour theMidwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias, located inClarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. In 1903 while waiting for a train in Tutwiler in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience:
“A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept… As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars….The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.”
About 1905 while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for “our native music”. He played an old-time Southern melody, but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn-out bass took the stage.
“They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps “haunting” is the better word.”
Handy noted square dancing by Mississippi blacks with “one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G.” He remembered this when deciding on the key for “St Louis Blues”.
“It was the memory of that old gent who called figures for the Kentucky breakdown—the one who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the calls like a presiding elder preaching at a revival meeting. Ah, there was my key – I’d do the song in G.”
In describing “blind singers and footloose bards” around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, “[S]urrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song … They earned their living by selling their own songs – “ballets,” as they called them—and I’m ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination.”
In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they started playing at clubs on Beale Street. The genesis of his “Memphis Blues” was as a campaign tune written for Edward Crump, a successful Memphis mayoral candidate in 1909 (and future“boss”). Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from “Mr. Crump” to “Memphis Blues.”
Handy’s first popular success, “Memphis Blues”. Recorded by Victor Military Band, July 15, 1914.
The 1912 publication of his “Memphis Blues” sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York–based dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. Handy sold the rights to the song for US$100. By 1914, when Handy was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolifically.
Handy wrote about using folk songs:
“The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect… by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major…, and I carried this device into my melody as well… This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot.”
W. C. Handy with his 1918 Memphis Orchestra: Handy is center rear, holding trumpet.
“The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville … While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous … Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.”
Regarding the “three-chord basic harmonic structure” of the blues, Handy wrote the “(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonkpiano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class”. He noted,
“In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like ‘Oh, lawdy’ or ‘Oh, baby’ and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits.”
Writing about the first time “St Louis Blues” was played (1914), Handy said,
“The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues … When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.”
His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his ethnicity, and he was among the first blacks to achieve economic success because of publishing. In 1912, Handy met Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by recreating failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.
While in New York City, Handy wrote:
“I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn’t… The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day…They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers.” But, “Negro vaudeville artists…wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers.”
In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs: “Memphis Blues”, “Beale Street Blues“, and “Saint Louis Blues“, had been published. That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new “jazz”, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.
Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, “a young white man” with a “soft Southern accent” who “could sing all my Blues”. Handy sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in “an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared.” Handy also published the original “Shake Rattle and Roll” and “Saxophone Blues”, both written by Bernard. “Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs “Pickaninny Rose” and “O Saroo”, with the music published by Handy’s company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music.”
“Ole Miss Rag”, a ragtime composed by W. C. Handy and recorded by Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis in 1917 in New York.
Expecting to make only “another hundred or so” on a third recording of his “Yellow Dog Blues” (originally titled “Yellow Dog Rag”, Handy signed a deal with the Victor company. The Joe Smith recording of this song in 1919 became the best-selling recording of Handy’s music to date.
Handy tried to interest black women singers in his music, but initially was unsuccessful. In 1920 Perry Bradford persuaded Mamie Smith to record two of his non-blues songs, published by Handy, accompanied by a white band: “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”. When Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” became a hit as recorded by Smith, African-American blues singers became increasingly popular. Handy found his business began to decrease because of the competition.
In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his long-standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. As Handy wrote: “To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organize Pace Phonograph Company, issuing Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company.”
Although Handy’s partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacred compositions and folk song arrangements and about 60 blues compositions. In the 1920’s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City. Bessie Smith‘s January 14, 1925, Columbia Records recording of “Saint Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920’s. So successful was Handy’s “Saint Louis Blues” that in 1929, he and director Kenneth W. Adams collaborated on a RCA motion picture project of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith have the starring role, since she had gained widespread popularity with that tune. The picture was shot in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.
In 1926 Handy authored and edited a work entitled Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is probably the first work that attempted to record, analyze and describe the blues as an integral part of the U.S. South and the history of the United States.
The genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as Handy’s hallmark, that author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel The Great Gatsby that “All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the “Beale Street Blues” while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.”
Following publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians entitled Unsung Americans Sing(1944). He wrote a total of five books:
During this time, he lived on Strivers’ Row in Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954, when he was eighty. His new bride was his secretary, the former Irma Louise Logan, whom he frequently said had become his eyes.
In 1955, Handy suffered a stroke, following which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
The grave of W.C. Handy at Woodlawn Cemetery
On March 28, 1958 he died of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York City.[26] Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.
Handy’s songs do not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.
US Postage Stamp 1969
Bronze Statue of W.C. Handy in Handy Park, Beale Street, Memphis
The footstone of W.C. Handy inWoodlawn Cemetery
| Maggie Jones | |
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| Birth name | Fae Barnes |
| Also known as | The Texas Nightingale |
| Born | c.1900 Hillsboro, Texas, United States |
| Died | Unknown |
| Genres | Blues |
| Occupations | Singer, pianist |
| Instruments | Vocals, piano |
| Years active | 1922—1933 |
Maggie Jones (c. 1900—unknown) was an American blues singer and pianist, who recorded thirty-eight songs between 1923 and 1926. She was billed as “The Texas Nightingale.” Jones is best remembered for her songs, “Single Woman’s Blues,” “Undertaker’s Blues,” and “Northbound Blues.”
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She was born Fae Barnes in Hillsboro, Texas. Her year of birth is most regularly cited as 1900, although this has not been proven. She relocated to New York in 1922, where she performed in local nightclubs. She appeared at the Princess Theater in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1922, and toured the TOBA theater circuit until ca. 1926.
Her debut recording session was on July 26, 1923, for Black Swan Records, where she became the first singer from Texas to record a side. Her recording career saw Jones appear on several record labels including Black Swan, Victor, Pathé and Paramount, although the bulk of her work was released by Columbia. On Black Swan and Paramount she was billed as Fae (or Faye) Barnes; on Pathé and Columbia she recorded as Maggie Jones. It is unknown whether marriage played any part in her name change.
Over a three-year period, her accompaniment was variously supplied by notables such as Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Green, and Elmer Snowden. Jones is especially noted for her six sides on which she was backed by Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong; author Derrick Stewart-Baxter singled out “Good Time Flat Blues” as “her masterpiece”. With Fletcher Henderson and Charlie Green she recorded “North Bound Blues”, which contained trenchant references to the South’s Jim Crow laws that are unusual for a classic female blues singer. By October 3, 1926, Jones had cut her final disc. In 1927 she performed with the Clarence Muse Vaudeville Company and sang in Hall Johnson‘s choir at the Roxy Theater in New York City.
In 1928–1929 Jones appeared with Bill Robinson in the Broadway production of Lew Leslie‘s revue, Blackbirds of 1928, which toured the US and Canada. She often worked outside the music industry, including co-owning a clothes store in New York. By the early 1930s Jones moved on to Dallas, Texas, and ran her own revue troupe which performed inFort Worth, Texas. In 1934 she appeared in the All American Cabaret in Fort Worth. She subsequently disappeared from the public eye.
| Maggie Jones | |
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| Birth name | Fae Barnes |
| Also known as | The Texas Nightingale |
| Born | c.1900 Hillsboro, Texas, United States |
| Died | Unknown |
| Genres | Blues |
| Occupations | Singer, pianist |
| Instruments | Vocals, piano |
| Years active | 1922—1933 |
Maggie Jones (c.1900—unknown) was an American blues singer and pianist, who recorded thirty-eight songs between 1923 and 1926. She was billed as “The Texas Nightingale.” Jones is best remembered for her songs, “Single Woman’s Blues,” “Undertaker’s Blues,” and “Northbound Blues.”
She was born Fae Barnes in Hillsboro, Texas. Her year of birth is most regularly cited as 1900, although this has not been proven. She relocated to New York in 1922, where she performed in local nightclubs. She appeared at the Princess Theater in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1922, and toured the TOBA theater circuit until ca. 1926.
Her debut recording session was on July 26, 1923, for Black Swan Records, where she became the first singer from Texas to record a side. Her recording career saw Jones appear on several record labels including Black Swan, Victor, Pathé and Paramount, although the bulk of her work was released by Columbia. On Black Swan and Paramount she was billed as Fae (or Faye) Barnes; on Pathé and Columbia she recorded as Maggie Jones. It is unknown whether marriage played any part in her name change.
Over a three-year period, her accompaniment was variously supplied by notables such as Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Green, and Elmer Snowden. Jones is especially noted for her six sides on which she was backed by Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong; author Derrick Stewart-Baxter singled out “Good Time Flat Blues” as “her masterpiece”. With Fletcher Henderson and Charlie Green she recorded “North Bound Blues”, which contained trenchant references to the South’s Jim Crow laws that are unusual for a classic female blues singer. By October 3, 1926, Jones had cut her final disc. In 1927 she performed with the Clarence Muse Vaudeville Company and sang in Hall Johnson‘s choir at the Roxy Theater in New York City.
In 1928–1929 Jones appeared with Bill Robinson in the Broadway production of Lew Leslie‘s revue, Blackbirds of 1928, which toured the US and Canada. She often worked outside the music industry, including co-owning a clothes store in New York. By the early 1930s Jones moved on to Dallas, Texas, and ran her own revue troupe which performed in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1934 she appeared in the All American Cabaret in Fort Worth. She subsequently disappeared from the public eye.
Her total recording output is available on Maggie Jones, Vol. 1 (1923-1925) and Maggie Jones & Gladys Bentley: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (May 1925-June 1926)/Gladys Bentley (1928-1929).
| Laura Smith | |
|---|---|
| Born | Unknown probably Indianapolis, United States |
| Died | February 1932 Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Genres | Classic female blues, country blues[1] |
| Occupations | Singer |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1924–1927 (recording career) |
| Labels | Okeh, Victor |
| Associated acts | Clarence Williams, Perry Bradford |
Laura Smith (unknown – February 1932) was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. She is best known for herrecordings of “Gonna Put You Right In Jail” and her version of “Don’t You Leave Me Here”. She led Laura Smith and her Wild Cats, and worked with Clarence Williams and Perry Bradford. Details of her life outside of the music industry are scanty.
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Smith was probably born in Indianapolis, Indiana, although her date of birth is unknown. What is certain is that in the early part of the 1920s, Smith toured the T.O.B.A. circuit. Her recording career started in 1924 with Okeh, and she finished it just three years later by recording some tracks for Victor. Music journalist, Scott Yanow, noted that her earliest recordings were her strongest, “by the time she recorded “Don’t You Leave Me Here” in 1927, much of the power was gone”. Her recordings included two songs, “The Mississippi Blues” and “Lonesome Refugee”, which were both written about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
She was seen as part of the unrelated set of Smith women (Mamie, Bessie, Clara and Trixie) who all recorded blues songs. In total, thirty five numbers were recorded by Laura Smith. It was reported that by 1926, Smith was married to a comedian, Slim Jones, and to be living in Baltimore.
Her most notable number, “Don’t You Leave Me Here” was, some ten years later, made more famous by a version recorded by Jelly Roll Morton.
Laura Smith died of the long term effects of hypertension, in February 1932 in Los Angeles.
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| Paramount 12098 Ma Rainey – Dream Blues / Lost Wandering Blues Images from the collection of Old Hat Records. |
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| Paramount 12650 Blind Lemon Jefferson – Piney Woods Money Mama / Low Down Mojo Blues |
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| Blue label used for re-releases of titles formerly available on Black Swan. |
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| Basic blue label, golden type, company information at bottom on two lines. Blue labels were used for discs that All images from the |
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| Basic blue label with added “PRICE 75c”. |
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| Basic blue label with added trademark text in Spanish under Paramount logo. |
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| Basic black label, golden type, company information at bottom on one line. “ELECTRICALLY RECORDED” under Paramount logo. |
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| Black label variant: no “Electrically Recorded” text. |
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| Black label variant: “Electrically Recorded” right off center and on two lines. |
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Rare use of basic “blue label” design
(with Spanish trademark text under Paramount logo) on a black label. No “Electrically Recorded” text. |
the78rpmrecordspins 