How Bessie Smith Died
The Louis Armstrong House Museum opens "Armstrong in Ghana" at the Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, a year long show marking the seventieth anniversary of Armstrong's 1956 concert tour to Accra, with listening sessions of the museum's own recording of his concert at the Accra Opera House and the Nubuke Foundation in Accra among the planned sites for the fall of 2027. Today's record is Bessie Smith's "Down Hearted Blues," which the Library of Congress added to the National Recording Registry in 2002, and Arturo O'Farrill is at Blues Alley in Washington behind M. Alex Ramirez.
LioraA museum in Queens opens a year long show about the trip Louis Armstrong took to Ghana in 1956. Today's record is a Bessie Smith record, and it is on the federal registry. Later, Mississippi, 1937, and how she died. It's Monday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Monday, October 5th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The Louis Armstrong House Museum opened "Armstrong in Ghana" on October 1 at the Louis
LioraThe Louis Armstrong House Museum opened a show on Thursday about a trip Armstrong took seventy years ago, and the plan is to take the show to Ghana.
It is called "Armstrong in Ghana." The museum calls it a multinational exhibition and music exchange, marking the seventieth anniversary of Armstrong's concert tour to Accra. It runs a year at the Louis Armstrong Center in Queens.
Armstrong first traveled to Ghana in 1956, just months after the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and one year before prime minister Nkrumah officially declared the country's independence.
The museum says Ghana was a unique destination in Armstrong's travels, where he experienced a powerful feeling of belonging, and the only African country he returned to more than once.
LioraThe curator is the museum's own executive director, Regina Bain. The museum names the gap it wants to fill: the tension of being a Black man representing America during the civil rights protests.
The part you can use. Out of its own sixty thousand piece archive, the museum promises listening sessions of the live recording from Armstrong's 1956 concert at the Accra Opera House. And the release says planned sites include the Nubuke Foundation, in Accra, in the fall of 2027.
Two. Listen to This: Bessie Smith's "Down Hearted Blues" went into the National Recording Registry in 2002
LioraToday's record is in the National Recording Registry, and there are two people on it.
"Down Hearted Blues," Bessie Smith, 1923. The Library of Congress added it in 2002.
The archive card: Columbia matrix 80863, cut in New York on February fifteenth, 1923. Five takes. Take five is the master, out on Columbia A3844.
Now count the room. Bessie Smith, and Clarence Williams at the piano. That is the whole band.
Two women wrote it. Alberta Hunter the words, Lovie Austin the music. The Library's essay, by Cary O'Dell, says Mary Lou Williams named Austin as her greatest influence.
One new one. Smoke Sessions put up "Steve Davis Meets Hank Jones, Volume Two" on Thursday, from a June 2008 session, a month before Jones turned ninety.
LioraThat was 1923. Now jump fourteen years. Today on The Bridge: Mississippi, 1937. How Bessie Smith died, in the words of the surgeon who came upon the wreck, and of a critic who wasn't there. Silas has the story. Welcome, Silas.
Three. The Bridge: Mississippi, 1937: how Bessie Smith died, in the words of the surgeon who came upon the
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasMississippi. Highway 61, north of Clarksdale. The early hours of September 26th, 1937.
Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, is touring the South. She's riding from a show in Memphis toward her next date, in Darling, Mississippi. The car is an old Packard. Richard Morgan is driving. Some sources call him her companion, others her manager.
The Packard hits a truck. Accounts differ on how. By one account, the worst of the impact is on the right side, where she sits. The crash tears off the wooden roof and turns the car over.
A Memphis surgeon, Dr. Hugh Smith, is out early. He comes upon the wreck by chance.
LioraA surgeon. By chance.
SilasBy chance. His is the fullest firsthand account we found. He later described "severe crushing injuries to her entire right side." He said she "wasn't conscious enough to talk." The bones around her elbow are shattered, but he found "the artery and nerves were intact."
While he works, by one account, a second car crashes into his own.
In his telling, an ambulance takes her straight to the hospital for Black patients in Clarksdale. The driver said that as a rule, he took "any injured black person straight to the black hospital."
She dies there that morning. The sources differ on how long she lived. Dr. Smith later said that even with the care available a few years later, "Bessie Smith would have had only a 50-50 chance to live."
LioraThat's not the story I know.
SilasAbout six weeks later, a young jazz critic, John Hammond, wrote in the magazine Down Beat that Bessie Smith "was refused treatment because of her color and bled to death while waiting for attention."
Hammond wasn't there. His source was secondhand, "members of Chick Webb's orchestra." He even wrote that "such tales can be magnified greatly in the telling," and asked for "Memphis citizens who were on the spot at the time" to confirm it.
LioraDid anyone answer him?
SilasNot by name. The headline on Hammond's piece was a question. "Did Bessie Smith Bleed To Death While Waiting For Medical Aid?" The very next month, December 1937, Down Beat ran an unsigned piece. "Southern Whites Did Not Turn Dying Bessie Away." It said, "Bessie did not bleed to death from lack of medical attention," and that she died "more from internal injuries than loss of blood."
LioraDid that settle it?
SilasNo. The correction did little to stop the story. It kept circulating for decades. Dr. Smith's own account first reached print in 1957, twenty years later, in the Clarksdale Press Register. In 1959, the playwright Edward Albee wrote a one-act play on Hammond's version. He called it The Death of Bessie Smith. It's set in a whites-only hospital, and it follows a nurse and the staff. Bessie Smith never appears onstage.
The hospital that took her in, the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital, closed in 1942. Mrs. Z.L. Ratliff Hill turned the building into the Riverside Hotel, a well-known stop for Black musicians touring the segregated South, the way Bessie Smith was. Inside, the room where she died is a memorial.
LioraHammond asked for someone from Memphis who was on the spot. A Memphis surgeon was.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Blues Alley has M. Alex Ramirez featuring Arturo O'Farrill at seven and nine thirty
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Washington.
Blues Alley bills M. Alex Ramirez, featuring Arturo O'Farrill. Two shows, seven and half past nine, twenty five dollars plus a seven dollar fee.
Now the sweep.
In Denver, Dazzle has the Joe Smith Orchestra, which the club calls his thirteen piece big band, with Hannah Rodriguez on vocals. Doors at half past five, show at half past six, from eighteen eighty five.
In New York, the Blue Note has Stefon Harris and Blackout, eight o'clock and half past ten, with Alexis Morrast on vocals. Thirty five at the bar, forty five at a table, before fees, plus a twenty dollar minimum.
In Chicago, the Green Mill has Joel Paterson and Friends, eight to midnight, ten dollars.
LioraAnd in Austin, the Elephant Room has Jon Blondell and Friends at six, then Kris Kimura hosting what the bar calls its Monday night jazz jam at eight. The bar's hours block puts a five dollar cover on Mondays, and no cover before eight.
Five. One More Note: On October 5, 1923, in Richmond, Indiana, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band cut eight sides
LioraOctober fifth, 1923, in Richmond, Indiana.
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band cut eight sides for Gennett in one day. "Alligator hop." "Zulu's Ball." "Krooked blues."
The archive's roster: King Oliver and Louis Armstrong on trumpets, Honore Dutrey on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Stump Evans on C-melody saxophone, Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano, Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, Baby Dodds on drums.
Eight titles, three discs. "Someday, sweetheart" took four takes, and the archive logs every one of them as unknown.
Outro
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That's your Monday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.