Bessie Smith

CTL-E-5940 · Person · musician · 1894–1937

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07182 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5940.

Bessie Smith, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and killed in a car crash near Clarksdale, Mississippi, on September 26, 1937, was the “Empress of the Blues” and the most commanding blues singer of the recording era's first decades. Orphaned young, she sang for pennies on Chattanooga street corners, joined Ma Rainey's orbit about 1912–1913, and signed with Columbia Records in February 1923. Her first coupling, including “Down Hearted Blues,” was a phenomenon, and across roughly 160 Columbia recordings between 1923 and the early 1930s she worked with Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong — their 1925 “St. Louis Blues” is a canonical recording — Benny Goodman, and Coleman Hawkins. Smith headlined the Theater Owners Booking Association circuit and was, by wide agreement, the highest-paid Black entertainer of her time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

The record

• Also known as: Empress of the Blues

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Bessie Smith entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5940 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 1 packet ordered reserve, position 15 of 20 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #610). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — foundational figure of the classic blues and a defining artist of the Black recording era; national-canon core scope. Vital status: DECEASED — died September 26, 1937, in a car crash near Clarksdale, Mississippi (all sources read). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): CONFLICTS SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: (1) Birth year — 1892 (Wikipedia), 1894 (Britannica; Donald Clarke), 1895 (her headstone). The era line carries 1894 on the strength of two reference works, with all three datings on the record's face. (2) “Down Hearted Blues” sales — 780,000 copies in six months (Clarke; New World Encyclopedia) against “more than two million copies” in Britannica's FAQ treatment; the bases differ (six-month count vs. cumulative claim) and are not merged. Columbia output: about 160 recordings (Clarke: 160 sides survive, 1923–1933). MEDIA: photo HELD (Bessie Smith portrait, 1936 (Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress) named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5940-bessie-smith.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Columbia Records — recorded for
  Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923 by Frank Walker; her first recording session was February 15, 1923, and she made 160 recordings for Columbia; her final recordings (November 24, 1933) were for Columbia's Okeh subsidiary. Tenure wording follows the Columbia-proper/Okeh distinction recorded on CTL-E-6293. Closes the blocked edge documented in Scan Tail Wave 2.
• Theatre Owners Booking Association — affiliated with
  Bessie Smith was among the entertainers TOBA provided steady employment to on its circuit in the 1920s.

Referenced by

• Ma Rainey — related to → this record

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Bessie Smith" (accessed 2026-10-16) — the reference biography: Chattanooga birth (1894 in Britannica's dating), the Columbia career, and the September 26, 1937 death — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bessie-Smith (primary source · build store)
• Donald Clarke, Encyclopedia of Popular Music, "Smith, Bessie" (accessed 2026-10-16) — born April 15, 1894, died September 26, 1937, Clarksdale; the Rainey apprenticeship, 160 Columbia sides 1923–1933, and “Downhearted Blues” selling 780,000 in six months — http://www.donaldclarkemusicbox.com/encyclopedia/detail.php?s=3144 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Bessie Smith" (accessed 2026-10-16) — the 1892 birth dating carried in the conflict below, the 1923 Columbia signing, the Armstrong collaboration, and the 1989 Hall of Fame induction — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Smith (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5940 · Combined Graph record U-07182 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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