Early Jazz & Blues #3 – Bessie Smith, First Sessions, 1923 (5/28/25)

46:05 – Bessie Smith’s first five recording sessions for Columbia Records, which made her a star and got her dubbed the Empress of the Blues. These sessions cover the first half of 1923, and also feature (at the piano) Clarence Williams on the first two sessions and Fletcher Henderson on the latter three.

This show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International license. Attribution: by Dave in Kentucky. Musical selections and show art are believed to be in the public domain, having been created over 100 years ago.