Bessie Smith: Sweet Mistreater on 2 CDs

Bessie Smith started out as a street musician in Chattanooga and in 1912 Bessie joined a travelling show as a dancer and singer and stayed with the show until 1915. Bessie then joined the Vaudeville circuit and gradually built up her own following in the south and along the eastern seaboard. By the early 1920s she was one of the most popular Blues singers in Vaudeville. In 1923 she made her recording debut on Columbia with 'Gulf Cost Blues' and 'Down Hearted Blues' which went on to sell more than 750, 000 copies that same year. Throughout the 1920s Smith recorded with many of the great Jazz musicians of that era, including Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman and Louis Armstrong. Her rendition of 'St. Luis Blues' with Armstrong is considered by most critics to be one of finest recordings of the 1920s.