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Scott ILLINOIS BESSIE SMITH and the Emerging Urban South BLUES EMPRESS IN BLACK CHATTANOOGA “An important, new retrospective on the life and community in which renowned blues singer Bessie Smith was raised. Scott provides an excellent account of the dynamics of race, sex, and material wealth in Tennessee as it developed into a pivotal transportation and manufacturing region in the postwar South. Especially fascinating are Smith’s move into vaudeville and other little-known aspects of her popularity and showmanship, which occurred long before Smith signed with Columbia Records and recorded her first hit. A model for popular culture courses, this book will also be useful in American studies, American history, African American studies, sociology, and women’s studies classes.” —Daphne Duval Harrison author of Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s As one of the first African American vocalists to be recorded, Bessie Smith is a prominent figure in American popular culture and African American history. Michelle R. Scott uses Smith’s life as a lens to investigate broad issues in history, including industrialization, Southern rural to urban migration, black community development in the post-emancipation era, and black workingclass gender conventions. Arguing that the rise of blues culture and the success of female blues artists like Bessie Smith are connected to the rapid migration and industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scott focuses her analysis on Chattanooga, Tennessee, the large industrial and transportation center where Smith was born. This study explores how the expansion of the Southern railroads and the development of iron foundries, steel mills, and sawmills created vast employment opportunities in the postbellum era. Chronicling the growth and development of the African American Chattanooga community, Scott examines the Smith family’s migration to Chattanooga and the popular music of black Chattanooga during the first decade of the twentieth century, and culminates by delving into Smith’s early years on the vaudeville circuit. MICHELLE R. SCOTTis an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Cover design: Kelly Gray Cover photographs: Bessie Smith (Samuel DeVincent Illustrated Sheet Music Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution); photograph of Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge taken from Cameron Hill (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection, LC-D4-10637). UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Urbana and Chicago www.press.uillinois.edu BLACK STUDIES / AMERICAN HISTORY ISBN 978-0-252-07545-2 Michelle R. Scott BLUESEMPRESS in Black Chattanooga EMPRESS in Black Chattanooga EMPRESS BESSIE SMITH and the Emerging Urban South Blues Empress i n b l a c k c h a t t a n o o g a ...

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