Elizabeth Smith

Elizabeth Smith (Bessie Smith) Elizabeth Smith was born on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her parents were Laura and William Smith. She was one of the second children. She was born into a poverty stricken black family in the segregated south. Her father was a Baptist minister he died soon after her birth leaving her mother to raise her and her siblings. She was about nine when she lost her mother and two brothers. Bessie and the remaining siblings were raised by their aunt. At the age of nine on the street corner of Chattanooga she started singing. To earn money for their impoverished household Bessie and her brother Andrew began to perform as a street singer he accompanied on the guitar. In 1904, her oldest brother Clarence covertly left home by joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. In 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe. He arranged for the managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher, to give Smith an audition. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer; Smith began performing as a dancer and a singer in the Moses Stokes. Soon she was with Rabbit Foot Minstrels which was led by the legendary blues singer Gertrude “Ma” and Pa Rainey. Smith developed a Relationship with Ma Rainey. She took Smith under her wing and gave her some early training, and over the next decade Smith continued to perform at various theaters and on the vaudeville circuit. Bessie then joined the T.O.B.A. vaudeville circuit and gradually built up her own following in the south and along the eastern seaboard. Ma Rainey was Bessie's mentor and she stayed with her show until 1915. By the early 1920s smith had settled down and was living in Philadelphia. 1923 she met and married a man named Jack Gee. That same year, she was discovered by a representative from Columbia Records with whom she signed a contract and made her first song recording “Gulf Coast Blues" and