Profiles the life and career of Blues singer Bessie Smith, covering her childhood, the challenges she faced due to racism, her personal life, and more.

Jazz, it is widely accepted, is the signal original American contribution to world culture. Angela Davis shows us how the roots of that form in the blues must be viewed not only as a musical tradition but as a life-sustaining vehicle for an alternative black working-class collective memory and social consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American middle-class values. And she explains how the tradition of black women blues singers - represented...

"Known for her prodigious musical talent, her timeless blues narratives about personal and socioeconomic problems, her tough persona, and her innate ability to enrapture audiences with her raw voice, Bessie Smith--the Empress of the Blues--receives a unique biographical treatment in this special life narrative captured by one of Scotland's finest poets. By masterfully blending research, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and her own experiences in listening...

Through historic performances and recordings, captures the spirit of such pioneering blueswomen as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, AlbertaHunter, Ida Cox, and others.