Bessie Smith part 2

Bessie Smith's marriage to Jack Gee was a rocky one. There was love, possibly. There was fear, probably. There was jealousy, definitely. There was violence, occasionally. There was cheating. Lots of it. With women. For both of them.

A section in Chris Albertson's well-regarded biography of Bessie Smith (1972) discusses the singer's love life. The narrative centers around Smith's violent conflict with her husband Jack Gee over the women in Smith's love life. Albertson's account provides a rare glimpse into the hectic affairs and husband-trouble of a Black, female, woman-loving blues singer in the mid-1920s.

For his biography of Bessie Smith, Albertson tape-recorded interviews with, among others, Ruby Walker, Smith's niece by marriage, who spent many years with her aunt as a performer in her shows and later as a close companion. Albertson's account of Bessie Smith's Lesbianism is evidently based on Ruby Walker's recollections. Albertson's biography is written with regard for accuracy of historical detail. The period covered in the excerpts below covers the period 1925-27.

It is not known at what stage in her life Bessie began to embrace her own sex. Some have assumed that Ma Rainey, who was similarly inclined, initiated her, but this theory is supported by no concrete evidence. But by late 1926, when Lillian Simpson entered her life, Bessie's sexual relationships included women. Lillian had been a schoolmate of Ruby's and when Ruby arranged an impromptu audition before Bessie, Lillian was hired as chorus girl.

In late 1926, Bessie learned that Jack had been unfaithful. She chased him out by shooting him with his own gun (and deliberately missing). With Jack out of the way for a while, it wass time for Bessie to have some fun. At the troupe's Christmas party, Bessie made her move on Lillian. Lillian, who was Ruby's roommate, didn't sleep in her bed that night. The day after her initiation, she confessed to Ruby what was going on, suggesting that Ruby didn't know what she was missing.

During the course of their fling, following a big fight between them, Lillian attempted suicide. Their affair continued after that, but in February 1927, Lillian decided to leave once and for all.

The affair with Lillian had kept Bessie relatively sober, but on the night following Lillian's departure, she cut loose. Detroit was a fine town for that. On previous trips, Bessie had befriended a woman who ran a buffet flat. Buffet flats - sometimes referred to as good-time flats - were small, privately owned establishments featuring all sorts of illegal activities: gambling and erotic shows, as well as sex acts of every conceivable kind. These buffet flats were usually owned by women, who ran them with admirable efficiency, catering to the occasional thrillseeker as well as to regular clients whose personal tastes they knew intimately....

Each time Bessie appeared at the Koppin, her proprietress friend would send one or two cars to the stage door to transport Bessie and her party - usually a coterie of girls who knew how to keep their mouths shut - to the notorious establishment. The night after Lillian left, Bessie took five girls, including Ruby, with her. As they walked out the stage door she delivered a familiar threat: "If any of you tell Jack about this, you'll never work in my shows again."

The house was packed with all kinds of people. Laughing pleasure-seekers, drinks in hand, formed human chains as they wandered up and down the linoleum-covered staircase, stopping in the various rooms along the way to take a peek at the shows. "It was nothing but gay men and lesbians, a real open house. Everything went on in that house - tongue baths, you name it. They called them buffet flats because buffet means everything, everything that was in the life. Bessie was well known in that place."

Although the flat's most popular attraction that season seemed to be a young man who made expert love to another man, Bessie was most intrigued by an obese lady who performed an amazing trick with a lighted cigarette, then repeated it in the old-fashioned way with a Coca-Cola bottle....

Back at the hotel, Bessie ended up alone in her room with Marie, a young dancer in the show. Then, all hell was broke loose: Jack had made one of his surprise appearances and caught Marie in a compromising situation with Bessie.

Marie managed to escape and Bessie took refuge in Ruby's room.

A song that Bessie recorded in 1927 was called Foolish Man Blues. It included the line: "...There's two things got me puzzled, there's two things I don't understand; That's a Mannish acting woman, and a skipping, twistin' woman-acting man."

Bessie knew, of course, what she was singing about when she recorded those words in 1927. Most urban blacks - whether they indulged or not - accepted homosexuality as a fact of life. Jack probably did, too, but not when it was so close to home. Not that he was totally straitlaced - he did indulge in heterosexual promiscuity. He may have suspected Bessie's sexual interest in women before the incident with Marie, but that appears to have been his first actual confrontation with his wife's bisexuality. Clearly it was more than he was prepared to take.

During her next performance, in Columbus, Ohio, Jack charged into the crowded dressing room and knocked Bessie to the floor. "I'm not going to do any more to you now," he said, looking down at her, "but wait until the show is done tonight - you ain't a man, but you better be like one because we're gonna have it out." He would be waiting at the hotel, he said, and walked out.

Bessie wasn"t ready to face Jack. "I'm in real trouble now," she told Ruby after clearing her room of performers and guests, "and I ain't about to mess with Jack as mad as he is. Fix my feathers, baby, and let's get this show over with and get out of town." In 1929 Smith ended the relationship, although neither of them sought a divorce. Smith later entered a common-law marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle. She stayed with him until her death.

Meanwhile back to the hits, 1926 was a good year for Bessie. First, there was I Ain't Got Nobody:

Then, there was Lost Your Head Blues:

In 1927, After You've Gone was a big hit:

... So was Alexander's Ragtime Band:

Backwater Blues was one of her most famous songs, a collaboration with James P. Johnson on piano:

1928 started off well, with A Good Man Is Hard to Find:

From the same year, Empty Bed Blues was her third song to be inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame:

Her hit for 1929 was Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out:

The lyrics of the above song seemed to be prophetic: at the height of her success, Bessie Smith’s career began to flounder, due in part to the financial ravages of the Great Depression and a change in cultural mores. By the end of 1931 she had stopped working with Columbia altogether.

In 1933, John Hammond asked Smith to record four sides for Okeh. She was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each selection on these Okeh sides, which were her last recordings.

Here are two of these. First, Take Me for a Buggy Ride:

Here's the B-side, Gimme A Pigfoot:

Over the next few years, Smith continued to perform. However, on September 26, 1937, Smith was en route to a show in Memphis, Tennessee with her companion of many years, Richard Morgan, when he sideswiped a truck and lost control of their car. Smith was thrown from the vehicle and badly injured. She died of her wounds in a Clarkdale, Mississippi hospital. She was 43.

Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia a little over a week later, on October 4, 1937. Her body was originally laid out at Upshur's funeral home. As word of her death spread through Philadelphia's black community, the body had to be moved to the O.V. Catto Elks Lodge to accommodate the estimated 10 000 mourners who filed past her coffin on Sunday, October 3. Contemporary newspapers reported that her funeral was attended by about seven thousand people. Far fewer mourners attended the burial at Mount Lawn Cemetery. Gee thwarted all efforts to purchase a stone for his estranged wife, once or twice pocketing money raised for that purpose.

Smith's grave was unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, 1970, paid for by Janis Joplin, a huge fan of Bessie, and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith. Dory Previn wrote a song about Joplin and the tombstone, Stone for Bessie Smith. Here it is:

Bessie Smith was a huge influence to many great musicians who came after her. Except for the Dory Previn song, The Band (Bob Dylan's group) also wrote a song called Bessie Smith. I couldn't find the original on youtube, so here's Norah Jones' version:

And here's the one by Ray Lamontagne: