Ma Rainey & Bessie Smith, Rock n Roll Stars
1929
Bessie Smith with a Jazz ensemble. With these two songs Bessie applies the Blues form to some of the earliest social protest songs highlighting the struggles of the working class and inequality of income and wealth. The style mirrors her more traditional Blues songs of love and loss, steady swinging, confident, full throated, growling vocals backed by Joe Smith rumbling horn work. The Roaring Twenties, speculative excess fueling a great stock market boom really only roared for white, urban elites. These songs, recorded before the October stock market crash, before the start of the Great Depression speak to the struggles of ordinary Americans and inequalities of opportunity, income and wealth.
“Washwoman’s Blues” (S. Williams)
“All day long I’m slavin’/ All day long I’m bustin’ suds/ Keep my hands tired washin’ out these dirty duds.”
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