A spectacular funeral was held in Philadelphia. Bessie heard the news in a bar, fled, and broke down and wept in her hotel room. 
Jack now appeared on her tours only to ask for money. Louis Blues, Reckless Blues, Sobbin Hearted Blues, Cold in Hand Blues, and Youve Been a Good Ole Wagonare among her very best. But only one book gives a feeling for Bessie as a human being. Primitive as Bessies records may sound to todays ears, they still give both singers and audiences much to learn. Okeh Records and the first black-owned company, Black Swan, both rejected her. We know that John's political affiliation is currently a registered Republican; ethnicity is Caucasian; and religious views are listed as Christian. WebIn the late '20s, Gee gee-whizzed his way into three grand worth a production money, supposedly for a new show starring Smith entitled Steamboat Days. He was 84 years old. Information about Bessies career before she began recording is scant, but we know that in 1913 the actor-theater manager Leigh Whipper (who hired her twelve years later at the Newark Orpheum) saw her singing at the 81 Theatre in Atlanta: She was just a teenager, and she obviously didnt know the artist she was. Also, he was tall and handsome, a real sharp dresser. HBO Bessie movie vs the real Bessie Smith "Snooks," as she had nicknamed the boy, was Margaret Warren's niece's son. As if providing material for a future biopic, he instead squandered the money on yet another singer he was having an affair with, Gertrude Saunders. Fortunately it survivedthe only existing footage of one of the greatest performers of our century. Father of Jack Gee, Jr. Frank Fallon Gee Jr. Frank Fallon (Jack) Gee, Jr., 78, of Roanoke County, entered his heavenly home on Tuesday morning, April 10, 2007. Gee v. CBS Briefs, No. I had begun to wonder myself. John Hammond wrote an article in Down Beat titled Did Bessie Smith Bleed to Death While Waiting for Medical Aid? He reported having heard that when finally she did arrive at the hospital she was refused treatment because of her color and bled to death while waiting for attention. He admitted that the account could have been exaggerated, but the damage was done. Sometimes he would lock me in the basement (on the 1600 block of Christian Street) and not feed me, but my mother always brought me lot of gifts when she came home from a tour, although she would not usually stay home for long. I couldnt understand at first what Billie thought shed learned from Bessie. She died in a Clarksdale, Mississippi, hospital at 11:30 on Sunday morning. The release of Back Water Blues just as catastrophic floods struck along the Mississippi helped make it a huge hit on her next tour, through North Carolina during the 1927 tent season. After hearing Green sing, Bessie asked, Is you in school? Green nodded. WebApr 15, 1894, A Star Was Born 1906, Orphan 1912, On Her Own 1923, The Big Break 1913, The Mother and the Empress Jun 7, 1923, Happiness 1925, A Son 1928, Falling Action 1928, Heartbreaking 1929, Empty 1933, A Revival? When they arrived at a stop, the crew would set up the tent and then settle down on the grass to eat a dinner prepared in the kitchen, often by Bessie herself. 1929)Son: Jack Gee, Jr. (adopted)Slept with: Arthur "Eggie" Pitts (musician)Slept with: Lillian Simpson (dancer)Boyfriend: Richard Morgan (bootlegger), Bessie Smith Blues Hall of Fame 1980 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1989 Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Empty Bed Bluess (1983) Grammy Hall of Fame Award for St. Louis Blues (with Louis Armstrong) (1993) Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Downhearted Blues (2006), Do you know something we don't? He believes she was probably so overworked that she simply let Frank Walker take care of all the recording details. Bessie Smith was an American Blues singer who was born on the 15 th of April 1894. She now wanted to complete the family by moving her sisters up from Chattanooga to live with her. Theater offers came pouring in, and her fee shot up to $350 a week. Both women had great presence, that special quality of seeming to be right there in the room singing to you, but while Billie crept up on you, Bessie came at you full throttle. Its not unusual for a performance of a current pop ballad to consist of little more than the calculated and skillful execution of these vocal effects and for an audience to respond to them as if they were revelations of spontaneous emotion. Three more hit songs followed before the end of the year -- Aggravatin' Papa, Beale Street Mama and Baby Won't You Please Come Home -- establishing the singer as one of the top blues acts in the country. on the Internet. She seemed to have found peace and comfort with Morgan, who by all accounts was the love of her life. 
Her new records were released in ever-decreasing quantities, and she took a substantial pay cut on her contract. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 3 daughters. Albertson long wished for a comprehensive book about Bessies life and work without thinking he might end up writing it himself. She quickly bounced back from the flop, accepting W. C. Handys offer to play the lead in a short movie based on a song of his that she had made her own, St. She seldom bought a record and never went to shows; she had the best voice, sold the most records, and drew the biggest crowds, and she apparently didnt feel she had anything to learn from anyone. In a departure from her usual repertoire, she recorded two quasi-religious songs with James P. Johnson and the Bessemer Singers, On Revival Day and Moan You Mourners. Some critics scoff at these tracks, but in view of her preacher-father, I dont find them such surprising choices, and she does them with great energy and fervor. According to witnesses, Bessie went out and faced down a dozen Klansmen herself, cursing them until they walked away. I came to love Bessie Smith not just for her sandblaster sound and aggressively honest music but for being the vibrant, unrepentant woman who came charging off the spinning vinyl to claim a permanent place in my life. Burial. Green did stay in school and grew up to become a nurse, a nursing-home owner, and an officer in the Philadelphia NAACP. . When Bessie threatened to get someone else to drive her, he gave in. She made me want to become one myself. Two of them were broadcast on radio. And when she couldnt keep up her expenses, Richard helped her out. Then, after five years of marital cat-and-mouse games, Jack at last committed an act of betrayal impossible to forgive. Her mischievous smile beams out from a sheet of colorful twenty-nine-cent stamps, part of a series on legendary blues and jazz singers. As Ruby said, She was a strong woman with a beautiful constitution, and she loved a good time. She was to become better known for how she had supposedly died than for anything she did while she was alive. Bessies appetite for liquor wasnt all she indulged. The truck vanished into the night; Bessies right arm was nearly cut off and her side crushed. In the dead of the Roman winter, I went back to Bessie. I guess I took after my mom in that regard. In the mid-1970s I interviewed Albertson, who talked to many people who had been at the 1937 accident scene and concluded that Bessie was in fact rushed to the closest hospital to the accident, which happened to be a black hospital, but that Bessie had lost too much blood to be saved with 1930s medical care. Words in Bessies songs that had meant nothing to me the year before were great comfort and inspiration to me now. Many of her classic twelve-bar blues have promising titles but little else to offer besides her fine singing. Fourteen years ago Chattanooga, her birthplace, added the Bessie Smith Strut to its activities at the annual River Bend Festival, and Bessie Smith Hall, a museum and performance facility, opened there in February 1996. Despite her decidedly secular way of life, she considered herself a religious woman. When Bessie died in a Mississippi car accident in 1937 at the age of 43, she had already established her legacy as "Empress of the Blues," a pioneering American performer who demanded respect and equal pay in a world dominated by men and controlled by whites. When Clarences show came to Chattanooga in 1912, he arranged an audition for his little sister, and she was taken on as a dancer. . You better stay there, cause you cant sing a note. Years later Green, at fourteen, showed her reverence for Bessie by turning up to scrub her kitchen floor every Saturday, and Bessie often rewarded her by cooking her a batch of fried chitterlings and scallions. The troupe included Gertrude (Ma) Rainey, who became known as the Mother of the Blues and is considered an early link between male country blues singers and female classic blues singers. The big-city black public was no longer amused by the broad humor and racial stereotypes of black vaudeville. World War I was ending, and a relieved public began to relax with illegal liquor and new music, urban blues and hot jazz. The other half was given by a woman named Juanita Green, who as a little girl hoping for a performing career had met Bessie when she coached children in a Harlem theater. Tack was so conservative., By 1924 race-record sales were slipping, but Bessies still sold well. Few people who knew her were still alive, all her sisters had died, and her spurned husband, a notoriously unreliable source anyway, demanded a million dollars for an interview. By the time they got back to the tent theyd have a crowd of customers in tow. Walker signed her, and Williams negotiated her contract. Believing Jacks claim that he was her manager, they gave her money to him. As Bessies very different style shows, Ma didnt teach her to sing. Green. Dr. Smith insisted that a black ambulance driver would have taken any injured black person straight to the black hospital (Clarksdale had segregated hospitals half a mile apart). But she was a mother figure to the girl, and they remained on good terms all their lives. WebJack Gee was a night guard in Philadelphia, and had been following Smith ever since Atlantic City; her affection for him only increased when, on their first time out together, Jack was shot during an argument and ended up in the hospital. Mamie Smith, the other famous blues singer, had a prettier voice, but Bessies had more soul in it. But together with Army doctors and Army nurses, they worked something very close to a miracle in the European theater. Her friends and relatives were amazed to see her suddenly become a mother, but she embraced the role. . She lived in what she later described as a ramshackle cabin with her surviving five brothers and sisters, raised by the eldest, Viola. The salesman laughed at her and said there was no way on earth a Negro woman could afford it. Walker guaranteed her $1,500 for the year but shrewdly crossed out the royalty clause. WebJohn Gee is 59 years old and was born on 02/24/1963.John Gee lives in Jackson, MN; previous cities include Aurora CO and Richardson TX.Other names that John uses includes John E Gee, John C Gee and John R Gee. Jack Gee (1889-1973), Bessie's extremely violent husband from whom she had been separated, thwarted all efforts to purchase a stone, once or twice even pocketing money raised for that purpose, according to researchers of Bessie. In 1960 Edward Albees play The Death of Bessie Smith expanded and spread the myth, and in 1970 Time magazine ran a piece titled Racially Rationed Health, which opened by citing the medical treatment of Bessie Smith in a sentence containing three erroneous details: After her black Samaritan driver [1] had been turned away from white hospitals [2], she at last reached a hospital that was willing to admit her . Her first (and only) screen appearance also took place in 1929 with a starring role in St. Louis Blues, a short film that was given a strong critical reception. Many newspaper editorials around the country denounced this apparent case of blatant racism, suggesting that her life might have been saved if the whites-only hospital had treated her. Her best were inspired by her own experiences. Good, said Bessie. Bessie fought violently with Jack, wrecked the room, and emerged covered with blood and feathers to take the cab straight back to Detroit. The film premiered on May 16, 2015. jack gee, jr. did jason donofrio married amelia. She despised black people who tried to look or act white and she ridiculed the prevailing practice of hiring only light-skinned chorus girls. As a result of her touring, Smith's popularity steadily spread beyond her home territory and into the North -- enough so that in 1921 she was compelled to relocate her home base to Philadelphia, where she took up a residency at Horan's Madhouse Club for the next three years. By now she was living in Philadelphia, where she fell in love with a tall, handsome night watchman named Jack Gee. Everybody knows what they did. The persistence of the legend of her disgraceful death long after the truth was documented is a social phenomenon worth a study of its own. Albertson, a Dane, seems to have been fated to become the leading authority on Bessie. That same year she formed her own act with dancer/vocalist Wayne "Buzzin" Burton in association with Park's Big Revue at the Dixie theater in Atlanta -- a city that would serve as her base of operations into the 1920s. Invitations to perform at prestigious venues such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo in New York and Art's Caf and the Wander Inn in Philadelphia followed. Frank Walker at Columbia gave him a little help, but Bessies star was falling there too. His claim was that Columbia Records had taken advantage of Bessie, who was nearly illiterate in the early 1920s (she had little or no schooling), by providing her with a lawyer who was actually a Columbia Records employee. She was offered a starring role in a Broadway show, a miraculous break for a black performer. They recorded two songs she had just written, Back Water Blues and Preachin the Blues., When she finally headed home to face Jack, she found that he had left for Hot Springs, Arkansas, telling people he needed to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. Concerned, she went there and paid for his stay, and they made up once again. Her last two recordings for the ungrateful twits at Columbia, Safety Mama b/w Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl, were released in November of 1931. Bessie was my favorite, but I never let people know I listened to her, she admitted. After the meal the band members put on their red jackets and marched through the town playing Bessies hits. Bessies career was taking off. Most of my information on Bessies life comes from his book, his liner notes, and my interviews with him. Im sure shed cuss me out and knock me flat if she heard me stealing her stuff, but my goal is to get her music into the publics ears. Italians were both friendlier and nosier than the French, and people often asked me what I was doing there. Last year NPR devoted an hour in its Jazz Profiles series to her life and work. After four more recordings Gee and Bessie discovered that her contract had been drawn up not with Columbia but with Clarence Williams, entitling him to pocket half her $125-per-song fee. Theaters she had once filled were closing down, and after nine years Columbia dropped her. In November 1933 he got her back into a New York studio with an integrated band of excellent jazz musicians, including Frankie Newton, Jack Teagarden, and Chu Berry. In 1932, he was discharged to Jack Gee. Jack Gee was the husband of Bessie Smith also known as the Empress of the Blues. Bessie, who had been briefly married before, married Gee in June 1923. I dont get it. Talmo, Jackson County, Georgia, USA. Brooks Atkinson called it the worst show of all time. The day his review came out Bessie dragged herself to the studio to record her deeply felt version of Nobody Knows You When Youre Down and Out.. Memorials may be made through the mortuary to the Jack Gee Jr. Memorial Fund. Her phrasing was full of surprises, some words compressed, others tantalizingly strung out. This is what they meant. Too busy for a honeymoon, she recorded seven more songs, accompanied this time by Fletcher Henderson, and then took off for a tour of the South. She rented two houses, for Viola and her husband, children, and grandchildren, and for her third sister, Luluignoring Jacks protests that her family drank too much and took advantage of her. The doctor examined Bessie and saw that the bones around her elbow were shattered and the soft tissue sliced clear through but that the artery and nerves were intact. In the mid-1970s I spent lots of time with Jack Gee, Jr., then in his mid-50s and working as a security guard (and later a bartender) in West Philly. A singers journey through the life of Irving Berlin. I remember one time about 1935 we were walking on North Broad Street, and we passed a Cadillac dealership, and mom saw a convertible in the window that she wanted to buy. WebJack Gee collected all the money that was due to Smith for the sales of her records. By the summer the film was made, most theaters had had sound projectors installed. Controversy always swirled around Bessie, even in death. They burst into his office and beat him until he tore up the contract, then headed over to Walker at Columbia to get better terms. Bessie knew other eminent blues singers of her day and was on good terms with most of them. Her timing was solid, dynamic, and exciting, no matter how little rhythmic support she got from her musicians. The grave remained unmarked until August 7, 1970, when a new tombstone was placed there, paid for by rock singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith. In top-forty pop-soul songs, I hear all the vocal effects she pioneered with none of her sincerity and substance. Her tour made a good profit, and the TOBA board decided to advance her three thousand dollars to mount two new shows for them. Through one of my students I met a well-known Italian jazz musician who had been inspired by the records of Sidney Bechet to take up the soprano saxophone. Two of Bradfords songs sung by Mamie Smith had some success, so he talked the company into letting her do a blues. I laughed when I read that she sang Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Tea for Two, but then I remembered what beautiful versions of Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Arlen standards were done by a later artist rooted in the blues, Ray Charles. Immediate Family: Son of Lilton Gee and Lillian Gee. Over the next couple years the young performer's abilities propelled her from dancer to chorus to featured soloist in quick succession, and by 1914 her popularity rivaled that of the company's featured performer Ma Rainey. I realize that not every listener shares my need to hear a song thats about something, but I believe Bessie did. He was never the same after she died, Maud told Albertson. She took oddly placed and oddly effectivelittle breaths and pauses before a word or even just a syllable, sometimes for narrative emphasis, sometimes because she seemed to savor the sound itself. (He had no idea who she was and didnt find out until years later.) She would twist out an evocative word for up to six notes to dramatize it: home, hate, long, alone . In the 1950s well-meaning liberals tried to have it destroyed. There are books with technical analyses of her vocal strengths (a big, mellow voice, an instantly recognizable sound) and weaknesses (a small range, a lack of harmonic sophistication) and detailed diagrams of her phrasing on specific songs. She didnt trust anything with a seal on it. Annoyed by her drinking, Jack made efforts to tour with her, punishing her carousing with scoldings and beatings. Throughout her career Bessie was notorious for paying low wages to her troupe no matter how much she made, but off the job she had a reputation as a soft touch, taking care of performers medical bills, bailing people out of jail, giving handouts to beggars, and buying gifts and clothes for family and friends. The boy's father had been a stranger in the night, and the mother was having trouble making ends meet since she had other children. Albertson thinks this is because the musical tastes of young people have changed so much. A subsequent Down Beat story gave the correct information that Bessie had actually been taken directly to the black hospital in Clarksdale and had died from loss of blood, but the myth lived on. They left at 1:00, Jack Gee, Jr., and the liberal press jumped on the story and kept it alive, he for personal reasons, the press for political ones. Albertsons book clears up the matter with a detailed account of the accident and its aftermath. Cable stations devoted to it reach sixty-two million homes. No stars.. For two years Bessie failed to get a contract while less talented performers with a less black sound flourished. The courts remanded Jack, Jr. to Viola's care, rather than to Smith's. He graduated in 1986 from Osaka University Medical School and earned a Ph.D. in 1993. Bessies earthbound songs of longing for love, sex, money, revenge, home, and better times seemed barren and monotonous to me next to the romantic and sophisticated ones Billie recorded just fifteen years later, and Billies band swung while Bessies plodded. Bessie was born on april 15, probably in 1894, in the Blue Goose Hollow section of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Longer stories in the black papers were also inaccurate. she enjoyed getting everybody drunk with her., By this time Jack Gee knew about Bessies infidelities and had committed some of his own. After hearing Green sing, Bessie asked, Is you in school? Green nodded. If she was in a partying mood, shed take Ruby out on the town. Smith continued to pursue her music career throughout the depression, however, maintaining a small "bootlegging" (illegal liquor) operation on the side in order to keep herself financially stable. Bessie never had any biological children, but in the Queen Latifah movie we see her (informally) adopted son, Jack Gee, Jr. (1919-1995), who had been born to the niece of one of Smith's chorus girls, Margaret Warren. . DOB: August 6, 1930 Died: August 14, 2010 Education: Monks Abbey Primary School Occupation: Singer, songwriter, actress, civil rights activist Genres: Jazz Full Name: Anna Marie Wooldridge Spouse: Max Roach (m. 19621970) Children: No Baby Years Active: 19562007 Abbey Lincoln Copyright 1949-2023 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. Its a three-billion-dollar-plus industry. Joplin, who once said Bessies singing showed me the air and taught me how to fill it, actually paid half the cost. WebWhen Jack, Jr. was ten, Jack Gee came and took him from Bessie's home when she wasn't there (in the movie Bessie is home and desperately tries to stop Jack). Bessies sound was certainly impressive; she had a big rich voice compared with Billies small, rough one. I find the blues lyrics she herself wrote to be some of her most evocative and satisfying. WebAll through 1930 and 1931, Jack Gee, Jr.. was in a boy's home in Maryland, away from his mother. Sep 26, 1937, Tragedy Struck Greatest Fame You might like: I dont know how that woman knew so many joints, Ruby said. My musicians were reluctant to play old-style jazzthey found the 1920s time-feel stiff and the harmonies cornybut once they heard the audience laugh and cheer, they were as won over as I had been that winter in Rome, when I finally gave her music a real chance. Discouraged, I eked out a living as a translator and teacher. While still very young, Bessie, accompanied by her brother Andrew on guitar, began dancing and singing on the streets in order to supplement her sister's income as a laundry worker; this activity did not have the approval of Viola, but was encouraged by her oldest brother Clarence, who was already making his own living as a traveling entertainer. 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