Crazy Blues Tribute Mamie Smith 1920 ♪♫

Mamie Smith was the first black vocalist to record the blues. The song was "Crazy Blues," and it became a hit. But it happened almost by accident.

"In a sense it was happenstance that Mamie Smith acquired the opportunity to record 'Crazy Blues,'" says Angela Davis, the '60s activist who is now professor of history, consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California/Santa Cruz.

Until 1920, no black singer had been recorded doing a blues song. Sophie Tucker was scheduled for a recording session earlier in the year, but fell ill. Perry Bradford, who wrote "Crazy Blues," persuaded Okeh Records to use Smith instead.

Smith was a versatile performer, but not a classic blues artist.

"At the age of 10, she was on the stage dancing," says Michael Taft, who has the ungainly title of head of staff at the Archive of Folk Culture at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. "She was a dancer and a singer and an actress. She performed in film in the '30s and '40s. She was an all-around entertainer."

Mamie Smith paved the way for another Blues singer named Bessie Smith. I included pictures of Bessie Smith who has been dubbed the Empress of the Blues because of the strong similarity in the two blues vocalists.

For more on Blues Legend Mamie Smith See:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/msjh.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6473116
http://blueslyrics.tripod.com/history/blueshistorypage3.htm
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/LetItResound/art_bj_smith_m.html
http://www.ieblues.org/articles.html

This is a non-commercial video and the music has been added pursuant to the fair use provision of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 as seen at the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Copyright_Act_of_1976#Fair_use

This video is still live because UMG has authorized the use of this content on YouTube. As long as UMG has a claim on this video, they will receive public statistics about this video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on this video's page.

For more info see:
http://www.youtube.com/copynotice?video_id=7aQAv-hBUmY

Category:

Music

Tags:

• blues
• jazz
• mamie
• smith

[MixedUpMeows]

the first blues song ever recorded. I should use this for my school project

[quinoacat]

not the 1st ever recorded....the first "official" recording of a Black Woman singing the Blues with an all white professional band...

[KawhackitaRag]

all white ??? Willie "The Lion" Smith was on piano for this date.

For later sessions, Mamie used Everett Robbins, who could play really funky and is one of my favorite pianists.

[quinoacat]

Thank you...I stand corrected...."mostly white"...

[pudding4me]

This is history

[quinoacat]

Monumental History. I was the first to post a video involving the song on Youtube and it was flagged as copyrighted but left live at UMG's permission; except it is only viewable in the USA. That is almost a monumental piece of history too.

[MixedUpMeows]

you got that right. seriously? who listens to crank that soljah boy? bring this back and the world is fun

[BringBackTheGood]

help spread the message

[chevy985]

Damn this is some head banging shit

[o1circle0]

@quinoacat how could it be flagged if it was recorded in the 20s?????

all music written be4 1922 is public domain in usa

[KawhackitaRag]

"Hager supervised the August 10, 1920, Okeh session at which Mamie Smith recorded the influential "Crazy Blues," permitting black musicians to accompany the featured singer-the first time that had happened in the Okeh studio. Accompanied by Okeh house musicians, Smith had made her

Okeh debut in February with "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't

Keep a Good Man Down."

I hope this clears things up!

[KawhackitaRag]

OK, in the book, "Popular American recording pioneers, 1895-1925" by Tim Gracyk and Frank W. Hoffmann, page 154, we find this paragraph in a section about Fred W. Hager:

[KawhackitaRag]

[...] The tune was just an ordinary old blues strain that had been used in other songs. Mamie said she had first used it in a show called "Maid of Harlem" at the Lincoln Theater under the title of "Harlem Blues." James P. Johnson once claimed he used the same strain in his "Mama's and Papa's Blues," which he had composed back in 1916. Other pianists remembered that part of the melody came from an old bawdy song played in the sporting houses, "Baby, Get that Towel Wet."

[KawhackitaRag]

[...] and no royalty deals. [Addington] Major, [Ernest] Elliott, and [Leroy] Parker are still alive [as of 1964] and will bear me out on the details of the first blues date. [Ward] Andrews, a man who loved his booze, died a few years later from tuberculosis. The side that took off like a prairie fire was "Crazy Blues." It was released in November 1920. In no time at all it was selling like hot cakes in Harlem. [...]

[KawhackitaRag]

[...] I taught the bandsmen their parts from the piano sheet music given to me by Miss Smith. All stood, except the Lion, in front of a large megaphone-like horn and Mamie really let loose with her fine contralto voice. As I recall, we got twenty-five dollars apiece for the two sides, and we had to wait two months to get our money. In those days it didn't matter how long it took you to get the sides down satisfactorily - the money was always the same, regardless of the time, [...]

[KawhackitaRag]

[...] We decided to call the unit The Jazz Hounds and it became a famous name for the bands working for Mamie Smith. The day, in August 1920, we went to make the sides there was only Mamie, Ralph Peer, myself, and the band in the studio. I can't recall that [Perry] Bradford was anywhere in sight. We waxed two tunes "Crazy Blues" and "It's Right Here for You" (If You Don't Get It, 'Tain't No Fault o' Mine). The former was a Bradford composition. [...]

[KawhackitaRag]

[...] selections for Ralph Peer, the guy in charge at Okeh, and he told us to get a band together. The band I organized for the deal included Addington Major on cornet; Ward (Dope) Andrews, an uncle of the famous trumpeter Charlie Shavers, on trombone; Ernest (Sticky) Elliott, a Clef Club musician I taught how to jazz it on clarinet [...]; and to round out the group we had violinist Leroy Parker. In those days they couldn't record drums or bass fiddle, so we didn't bother to use them. [...]

[KawhackitaRag]

Here's some of what Willie "The Lion" Smith himself had to say about the session, courtesy of his autobiography, "Music On My Mind" (Da Capo Press/Doubleday, 1964/1978), pages 103-104: "So one night between sets at Leroy's [club] I took a trip over to Digg's Cafe and gave Mamie a listen. She was O.K. When I talked to her she told me she had two Perry Bradford blues songs she wanted to record. [...] As I remember it now, Mamie and I went down to an old-fashioned studio and performed some [...]