Queen Latifah did her homework to play blues singer Bessie Smith in HBO's movie 'Bessie'

While she was recording Smith’s music, Latifah says, she found she started to jot down little notes to herself.

“I had to sing differently,” she says. “Bessie had a different vibrato and she pronounced certain words in a distinct way.

“When I got to the word ‘here,’ I wrote it down as ‘hyeah,’ because that’s how I needed to sing it.

“It’s the way some folks spoke in her generation. I remember hearing a little of that in my grandfather’s voice when I was very young.”

Pronunciation, however, is where the similarity ends between Latifah’s grandfather and Bessie Smith.

In fact, Latifah says, that’s where the similarity would end between almost anybody and “The Empress of the Blues.”

The most popular and arguably most important blues singer of the 1920s, Smith has become the same kind of popular music touchstone as her contemporaries Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.

While she was only 43 when she died in a car accident in 1937, she remains a standard against which singers still can measure themselves.

“Her voice is one of the most amazing things I ever heard,” says Latifah. “And that’s from recording on the equipment of 100 years ago. If she had ever recorded on modern equipment, people would be astonished by the power of her voice.”

Latifah was first approached about playing Smith 22 years ago, when she was known as a rapper who was just starting to act.

Over the years the project took different shapes. By the time it was made, Latifah was also an executive producer who had banked several years singing jazz and soul music on her own.

That background is evident on the movie soundtrack “Bessie,” on which Latifah sings six of Smith’s most popular songs and “joins” her for a remastered duet of Smith’s classic “Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer.'

The soundtrack also features vintage recordin

The soundtrack also features vintage recordings by the likes of Armstrong and Sippie Wallace, plus two instrumentals by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks.

as far as the acting goes.

Queen Latifah reigned in morphing into a believable bessie smith