[78-L] Bessie Smith Album

[Michael Biel]

This didn't get posted a few days ago because it wasn't in plain text
format.  So this is some of the info I didn't realize until now had not
been sent to you.  

According to John Hammond in Down Beat, the Bessie Smith album was
issued mid-November 1938.  In the November 1938 issue he had an article
discussing her death in Sept. (conjectering that she might have bled to
death because of being turned away from a white's hospital, a theory
that was thoroughly rejected in a front page story the next month), and
in the article he announced:


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" . . . the UHCA is busy sponsoring a special Bessie Smith memorial
album containing twelve of her most inspired blues, with accompaniment
by Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Joe Smith, Coleman Hawkins,
Bustger Bailey, Charlie Green, Jimmy Hohnson, and a few other great
artists.  The album will be released by Brunswick-Columbia around the
middle of November with pictures of the performers and details about
each of the discs.  Take it from one who cherished all the records that
this will be the best buy of the year in music."
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This would seem to indicate that the album should have had a booklet and
that it included six specific discs, not just discs chosen by the buyer.
 In the December issue -- in an article separate from the front page
article which seems not to be written by him -- Hammond reports:

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"In honor of Bessie Smith and as an accommodation to the hundreds of
requests for her records which the news of her passing was broadcast,
Columbia Records recently put out a Bessie Smitgh Album containing
re-pressings of six of the 80-odd records she made between 1922 and
1929.  One of these, 'St. Louis Blues' and 'Reckless Blues' is thought
by many to be the greatest blues record ever made."
+++++++++


The Columbia Supplement which lists all of the records "issued since the
last Columbia catalog of December 1937" thru Sept 1939 lists each of the
pre-C-11 albums as "Special Album" except for the Bessie album which has
its C-8 number.  The loose-leaf sheet dated 9/1/40 from the Columbia
Numerical lists the albums thru C-27 minus the C-4 limited edition of
Air Raid which also was not in the Sept 1939 supplement catalog. but
according to dl was in the full Oct 1940 catalog.  As we have seen, the
pre C-11 albums were issued without numbers, and the Bessie album came
out a about full year before Air Raid was aired on Oct 27, 1938.  I have
not found a review of the Air Raid album this week in order to estimate
its release date in absence of Masterworks , but I did find a review of
it in Time magazine during my dissertation research.  I have the record
numbers of all of the discs in the albums and will try to tabulate them
-- but will send this posting out first. 


Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com