Bessie Smith Blues

Transgender Dysphoria Blues

What Percentage of the Population was Transgender in 2022?
“Transgender is a term used to describe people whose gender or sense of personal identity does not match the sex they were born with. In other words, a transgender person may have been born as a male but identifies as a female or vice versa. Transgender people are part of the LGBTQ+ community. According to the Williams Institute, 1.4 million adults identify as transgender in the United States. About 0.7% of adults 18-24 identify as transgender, and 0.5% of adults 65 and older identify as transgender.”https://youtu.be/f3isaRfr9aY?list=RDf3isaRfr9aY
Transgender Dysphoria Blues – Against Me – Full Album 0:00
Transgender Dysphoria Blues 3:14 True Trans Soul Rebel 6:25 Unconditional Love 9:18 Drinking with the Jocks 11:09 Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ 13:59 FUCKMYLIFE666 16:57 Dead Friend 19:58 Two Coffins 22:14 Paralytic States 25:26 Black Me Out

https://thepeaceresource.com/2022/05/25/transgender-dysphoria-blues/

Besides male and female, there are 72 other genders

https://thepeaceresource.com/2023/09/25/religion-sexuality-and-blues/

Omnigender: Having or experiencing all genders.

https://youtu.be/j-LTJNasTMc
Gladys Bentley on “You Bet Your Life”

Gladys Bentley embracing Louis Armstrong, circa 1952. Photo Ebony Magazine

https://youtu.be/7LeDbXK7H20
Gladys Bentley: Gender-Bending Performer and Musician

In the 1910s and 20s, Ma Rainey took the stage with an ostrich feather in one hand and a gun in the other.

https://youtu.be/yRyaUcVfhak?list=RDEM7LXcUM0jPnHwGLV1Ck28sg
Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey – Prove It On Me Blues

“Comin’ a time, B.D. women they ain’t going to need no men,” sang Lucille Bogan in 1935. B.D. was short for bulldagger, the black slang term for a butch lesbian.

https://youtu.be/_nmrWB1ovQ0?list=RD_nmrWB1ovQ0

“B.D. women, you sure can’t understand. They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural man.”

Big Mama Thornton died in 1984. That same year, she was officially inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. Listen to more here:

https://youtu.be/JvbSXVc451Q?list=RDJvbSXVc451Q
BIG MAMA THORNTON – Live YOU AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HOUND DOG

Relgion and sexuality are about obsession…

https://youtu.be/57Ykv1D0qEE?list=RDX_8lak8zICU
Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

Anthropomorphic religion is narcissism, but sexualty is who we are.

https://youtu.be/gJwUBBswnSQ?list=RDgJwUBBswnSQ
Chronic Blues by John Coltrane from ‘Coltrane’

Jung believed that religion was a natural expression of the collective unconscious whilst Freud believed it was a collective neurosis.

https://thepeaceresource.com/2023/09/25/religion-sexuality-and-blues/

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street
Bessie Smith

corners. She began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 43.

https://youtu.be/1VKEKkTQU-k
Tain’t Nobody Business If I Do (Bessie Smith)

Legendary blues singer Bessie Smith is buried near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 4, 1937. Some 7,000 mourners attended her funeral. Smith had been killed a few days before when the old Packard she was driving hit a parked truck near Coahoma, Mississippi, between Clarksdale and Memphis. There is no record of Smith’s exact birth date, but she was about 43 years old.

https://youtu.be/5Bo3f_9hLkQ

Bessie Smith – St.Louis Blues (1929)

Bessie Smith had been in show business since she was a teenager. In 1912, she joined a traveling vaudeville troupe, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and spent the next decade singing in minstrel shows and cabarets all around the South. (One popular rumor held that blues great Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the leader of the Foots, had kidnapped the talented young singer and dragged her from show to show against her will. This was not true—Rainey was Smith’s friend and mentor—but it made for great publicity.)

https://www.history.com/…/blues-singer-bessie-smith…

In 1923, Smith released her first record, “Down-Hearted Blues.” It sold nearly 800,000 copies and made her a superstar. In fact, by the end of the 1920s Smith had made more money than any black performer ever had. She performed and recorded with luminaries like Clarence Williams, Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson’s band and she starred in the 1929 film “St. LouisBlues.” Unfortunately, in the 1930s Smith’s career stalled. The Depression, changing musical tastes that favored jazz and swing instead of vaudeville blues and the singer’s severe alcoholism made it nearly impossible for her to find work. Toward the end of the decade, though, Smith had begun to record and perform again.

https://youtu.be/BZVD8QqNoak
Bessie Smith – A Good Man is Hard to Find

The circumstances surrounding the singer’s death are mysterious. We know that Smith was gravely injured—her arm was nearly severed—in the accident. After that, some people say, the doctor at the scene ignored her while he tended to the bumps and scrapes of a white couple that was in a nearby fender-bender. Other sources say that Smith bled to death while her ambulance drove around in search of a hospital that would treat black patients. (Edward Albee based his 1959 play “The Death of Bessie Smith” on this version of events.) Most historians now agree that the stories are apocryphal: Smith did make it to the hospital, but her injuries were so severe that it made no difference.

https://youtu.be/DmWEefV9w4c
Bessie & Her Boys, back in 1930s Harlem!

In the summer of 1970, shortly before her own death from a heroin overdose, the young singer Janis Joplin had a headstone made for Smith’s unmarked grave. It reads, “The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing.”

https://youtu.be/-e1Z1vROOEs

Against The Odds – The Story of Bessie Smith (1983)

some of this is from: HISTORY.COM EDITORS

HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. Articles with the “HISTORY.com Editors” byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata.

https://youtu.be/Nn1-PzuEMtU

Norah Jones and band playing Bessie Smith(by The Band).
Live at France Radio 105.(fri. april 20 2012) Ms. Jones dedicated this performance to Levon Helm who sadly died the day before. Bessie Smith (dedicated to Levon Helm) – Norah Jones

A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levon_Helm#Biography

The concert was a tribute to the life of The Band’s co-lead vocalist and drummer Levon Helm, who died of throat cancer on April 19, 2012.

https://youtu.be/jf–qeFXfyE
Love For Levon Concert Encore [w/ all artists]

Roger Waters, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Eric Church, Dierks Bentley, John Mayer, Ray LaMontagne, Grace Potter and more!

(IZOD Center, NJ on 10/3/12)