Even though she was a MEAN bitch, I am going with Ethel. Bessie just has this old timey thing to her voice that I can't get with. It may have to do that the quality of the recordings I have heard from her have been shitty.

Damn, you took it back!!

Bessie.

scriptgirl, you must be watchin Cabin In The Sky or something, lol.

Funny, you ask, I caught "Cabin" a few days ago!

scriptgirl said:

Funny, you ask, I caught "Cabin" a few days ago!

That was my grandma's favorite movie.

Both.

If I'm in a mood for squeaky clean show tunes, Ethel is my choice(although she too had her shares of risque music) and if you want the ham hocks, fried catfish, country ass bama ass all the way dark & down blues, Bessie should do it.

I think their bodies of work compliment each other very well.

If I just had to pick between the two.

Bessie Smith

Ms Trina, why Bessie?

scriptgirl said:

Ms Trina, why Bessie?

Bessie Smith is kinda the forgotten one and her impact on blues, jazz, music period. It's common for many music / jazz historians to say, there was music before Mr. Louis Armstrong and there was music after Mr. Armstrong. No, there was music before Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Smith and there was music after Armstong and Smith. Her impact was on par with his and her influence is heard in almost every Blues, Jazz, R&B, and Gospel singer of the twenty century: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, the list goes on. Not to speak of her prolific recording and songwriting. If Ms. Smith had lived I have no doubt she would have been a force post WWII, songwriting, stage musicals, writing songs for the emerging genre of R&B.

That's why I gave Ms. Smith the edge . . . ever so slight.

============

[Edited 1/24/11 12:03pm]

Thanks for the schooling, Ms Trina!

I'm not that familiar with Ethel Waters but I loves me some Bessie Smith!

kitbradley said:

I'm not that familiar with Ethel Waters but I loves me some Bessie Smith!

She was the first who sang...

And Ethel was ever so pissed when Stormy Weather later became Lena's signature song.

scriptgirl said:

And Ethel was ever so pissed when Stormy Weather later became Lena's signature song.

Can't blame her. Ethel came from the streets without a measly dime to her name and she worked hard for hers, I'm not saying she shouldn't have been graceful but not everybody can be.

She gave Billie Holiday grief for singing "Am I Blue" too,,,,which was her signature song. And Billie wasn't one to back from a fight.

Did you read that bio that came out on Lena last year, called Stormy Weather? She came up the hard way as well.

scriptgirl said:

Did you read that bio that came out on Lena last year, called Stormy Weather? She came up the hard way as well.

I wasn't discrediting Lena by my previous post, I'm just saying I understand the reasoning behind Ethel's attitude.

Lena came from a prestigious family, she might have been stung by the Jim Crow beetle like the rest of black folks(maybe moreso because she was what they called back then an "Uppity Nigger") but unlike Ethel, she had the support of her father who was always in her corner, whereas Ethel could've fell back to the whorehouse life where she used to run errands for them and ended up living her life fighting people off of her. No comparison between the two.

Actually, contrary to popular belief, Lena's dad basically abandoned her and she rarely saw him. He came around only when it became apparent she was going places.

[Edited 1/24/11 14:13pm]