The Empress of the Blues
This week's featured album art focuses on Bessie Smith, to coincide with the announcement of our next Listening Party featuring Ms. Smith and many other great women blues artists.
The haunting, mysterious arm of Empty Bed Blues folds out into Philip Hays' full portrait of this legendary performer. A second album designed by Hays, Any Woman's Blues, reveals two sides of the woman known as the Empress of the Blues. Smith recorded a great deal in the 1920s but these posthumous compilations have a 1970s feel all their own...
Alexander Jarman
