Trixie Smith

 

Remembering Trixie Smith...1895-September 21, 1943...One of the Lost Women of Jazz, Smith had a clear, warm delivery and a talent for finding excellent musicians to back her. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Smith studied at Selma University in Alabama before moving to New York in 1915 to enter show business. At first she worked in minstrel shows and on the TOBP vaudeville circuit where she became a featured vocalist. In 1922 she made her first recording for the Black Swan label including "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)". That song would turn out to be the first secular recording that would mention "rock and roll" and would spawn other records by blues singers of the era with "rock" and "roll" in the lyrics.

That same year she won a blues singing contest judged by Vernon and Irene Castle singing her song "Trixie's Blues". Her most famous song, "Railroad Blues" was recorded in 1925 with Louis Armstrong on coronet. She recorded with James P. Johnson and Freddy Keppard as well as Fletcher Henderson's band and the all-white band "The Original Memphis Five", both of which were billed as Trixie Smith and her Down Home Syncopators. Although she made some excellent recordings with an all-star band which included Sidney Bechet in 1938-39, her recording career was pretty much over by 1925.

As the era of great female jazz singers came to an end, Smith kept her career going by performing in cabarets and in musical revues at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. She appeared in a few movies including "God's Stepchildren" and "Swing!" in 1938. That same year she also appeared in the famous Carnegie Hall concert, "From Spirituals to Swing". When she died five years later after a brief illness at the age of 48, Smith was already a largely forgotten artist.