Customer Reviews

1925-1933

5 star:		(3)
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This album blows me away every time I get the air moving with these 70 year old vibrations. Bessie Smith's performances, of course, are stunning. But the quality of sound on this reissue is what brings her and her band into your living room. You realize after hearing this CD, that the tinny quality we have come to associate with 78 records is an artifact, caused by engineers who hate noise more than they love music, and use low-pass filtering. These recordings are unfiltered, and beautiful. It makes me want to check out Hermes' other reissues in its Vintage Jazz Series.

A nicely remastered set of Bessie Smith tunes, though not a complete set, this is a difinitive sampler and a great place to start if you've never listened to Bessie Smith before. A good example of why she was "The Empress Of The Blues." Also listen to Big Mama Sue, who is heavily influenced by Smith, she sings and plays washboard in most major Dixieland festivals today, visit and listen to her at bigmamasue.com

For anyone wanting an overview of Bessie Smith's recording career, this compilation is well worth considering. On the first track she's accompanied by (Fletcher) Henderson's Hot Six, which includes Charlie Green on trombone, Buster Bailey on clarinet, and Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax. Louis Armstrong is involved on the next three, and the later recordings include the sublime "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out". The compilation concludes with three of her last four recordings, on which she demonstrates that her voice was as good as ever. Sound quality is excellent despite the fact that this CD dates from 1987.