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The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith
By Delores Edwards
Nobody loved the blues more than Bessie Smith.
Crowned “The Empress of the Blues,” singer Bessie Smith’s sultry and sassy
voice left audiences howling. During her heyday, Smith was one of the highest paid African
Americans in the United States before her untimely death in a 1937 automobile accident.
Her song “Downhearted Blues,” recorded in 1923, sold more than 780,000 copies
helped ignite the Columbia record company. |
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Singer and actress Miche (pronounced Mickey) Braden performs a foot-stomping,
hand-clapping performance of the blues diva in “The Devil’s Music: The Life and
Blues of Bessie Smith,” at Theatre Three in Manhattan.
Dressed in a fiery red dress to match the fervor of her character’s persona, Braden
belts out 14 songs including, “Gimme a Pigfoot,” “Kitchen Man Blues,”
“Baby Doll,” “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” along with a sexually charged
tête-à-tête with a saxophone during “St. Louis Blues.”
Set in a 1937 Memphis, Tennessee in a buffet flat, a private after hours club frequented
by blacks looking to escape the rigors of segregation, and surrounded by a trio of
musicians, the one-act play takes audiences chronologically through Smith’s
tumultuous life.
Smith grew up poor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, sang for pennies on the street and
eventually became a member of Ma Rainey’s vaudeville act. Smith’s quick-wit and
sharp-tongue helped her face many racists of the time, including the Ku Klux Klan.
During Braden’s performance, the audience also learns of Smith’s free-spirited
lifestyle. There’s an open and honest discussion of Smith’s intimate
relationships with both men and women. Marijuana butts fill an ashtray. Several bottles of
liquor bottles share the stage.
But it’s the bawdiness of the real Smith and Braden’s talent that will have
audiences leaving the tiny theatre with a little swagger in their walk and a soul filled
with blues. The real Bessie Smith wouldn’t have it any other way.
The play runs one-hour and 15 minutes. Tickets are $35.00. “The Devil’s
Music” is playing now through March 3rd.
The Melting Pot Theatre Company
The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith
Theatre 3
311 West 43rd Street
New York, NY
(212) 279-4200. M
March 2001
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