1. Bessie Smith was the Madonna of her day.

2. Billie Holiday or Bessie Smith had more personality than a hundred of today's pop singers.

3. Yet singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith proved they were talents to be reckoned with.

4. Bessie Smith was an incomparable singer in her days.

5. Bessie Smith really sent him.

6. He is as much my father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley's mother.

7. And not just men. Here is Bessie Smith performing Any Woman's Blues.

8. Nevertheless,(/bessie smith.html) Bessie Smith was the most popular and most successful blues singer of her day.

9. Some famous blues musicians are Bessie Smith, John LeeHooker, and B. B.

10. Her early records reveal a tiny voice, pale in the shadow of her acknowledged influences: Armstrong and Bessie Smith.

11. As a child, Holiday listened to Armstrong's singing as well as that of the "empress of the blues", Bessie Smith.

12. In the early years, well-known jazz performers such as Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith were regular customers.