Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her siblings survived by performing on street 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.
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  For example, after giving a concert to a white-only audience at a theater in Memphis, Tennessee, in October 1923, she performed a late-night concert on station WMC, which was well received by the radio audience. Musicians and composers like Danny Barker and Tommy Dorsey compared her presence and delivery to a preacher because of her ability to enrapture and move her audience. She made 160 recordings for Columbia, often accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, notably Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green. A number of Smith's recordings—such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1927—quickly became among the best-selling records of their respective release years.
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  in her performances as she shifted her blues artistry into something that fit the swing era. The relatively modern accompaniment is notable. The band included such swing era musicians as the trombonist Jack Teagarden, the trumpeter Frankie Newton, the tenor saxophonist Chu Berry, the pianist Buck Washington, the guitarist Bobby Johnson, and the bassist Billy Taylor. Benny Goodman, who happened to be recording with Ethel Waters in the adjoining studio, dropped by and is barely audible on one selection. Hammond was not entirely pleased with the results, preferring to have Smith revisit her old blues sound. "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)", both written by Wesley Wilson, were among her most popular recordings.
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  supposedly stopped singing to spit. The businessmen involved with Black Swan Records were surprised when she became the most successful diva because her style was rougher and coarser than Mamie Smith. Even her admirers—white and black—considered her a "rough" woman (i.e., working class or even "low class"). Smith had a strong contralto voice, which recorded well from her first session, which was conducted when recordings were made acoustically. The advent of electrical recording made the power of her voice even more evident. Her first electrical recording was "Cake Walking Babies [From Home]", recorded on May 5, 1925. Smith also benefited from the new technology of radio broadcasting, even on stations in the segregated 
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  with the Stokes troupe and arranged an audition for his sister with the troupe managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. Bessie was hired as a dancer rather than a vocalist since the company already included popular singer Ma Rainey. Contemporary accounts indicate that, while Ma Rainey did not teach Smith to sing, she likely helped her develop a stage presence. Smith eventually moved on to performing in chorus lines, making the "81" Theatre in Atlanta her home base. She also performed in shows on the black-owned Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit and would become one of its major attractions.
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  sponsors the Bessie Smith Strut as part of the city's Riverbend Festival. She was the subject of a 1997 biography by Jackie Kay, reissued in February 2021 and featuring as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, read in an abridged version by the author. The song “Bessie Smith” by The Band first appeared on The Basement Tapes in 1975, but probably dates from 1970 to 1971. Although musician Artie Traum recalls bumping into Rick Danko, the co-writer of the song in Woodstock in 1969 who sang a verse of “Going Down The Road to See Bessie” on the spot. In the 2015 HBO film Bessie, Queen Latifah portrays Smith, focusing on the struggle and transition of Smith's life and sexuality. The film was well received critically and garnered four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Television Movie.
Title: Carrie Smith
Content:  Smith was born in Fort Gaines, Georgia, United States. She was a member of a church choir that performed at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. In the early 1960's, Smith appeared on TV Gospel Time, a show designed to appeal to black audiences. She first won notice singing with Big Tiny Little in the early 1970s, but became internationally known in 1974 when she played Bessie Smith (to whom she is of no relation) in Dick Hyman's Satchmo Remembered at Carnegie Hall. Smith then launched a solo career, performing with the New York Jazz Repertory Orchestra, Tyree Glenn (1973), Yank Lawson (1987), and the World's Greatest Jazz Band, in addition to recording numerous solo albums. She starred in the Broadway musical Black and Blue from 1989 to 1991. The liner notes to the CD reissue of Only You Can Do It, featured laudatory remarks from jazz critics Rex Reed, Leonard Feather, Richard Sudhalter, and John S. Wilson. The album, produced by Ben Arrigo for GPRT Records, featured the compositions of Gladys Shelley.
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  Smith's career was cut short by the Great Depression, which nearly put the recording industry out of business, and the advent of sound in film, which spelled the end of vaudeville. She never stopped performing, however. The days of elaborate vaudeville shows were over, but Smith continued touring and occasionally sang in clubs. In 1929, she appeared in a Broadway musical, Pansy. The play was a flop; top critics said she was its only asset.
Title: Billie Pierce
Content:  Madison Goodson was a Deacon. According to Billie, she was about two years old when she first started to play the piano. Though her parents disapproved of ragtime, blues, and jazz, only playing religious music, Billie and her sisters were drawn to it. When Ms. Pierce was about ten years old, she and her sisters would go down to the Belmont Theatre to listen to Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith when they passed through Pensacola, Florida. In 1922, when Ms. Pierce was almost thirteen, Bessie Smith passed through town again. Bessie's pianist, Clarence Williams, suffered a heart attack and Ms. Pierce subbed in to played piano with Bessie Smith for two weeks at the Belmont Theatre.
Title: Bessie Smith
Content:  in tent shows the rest of the year, Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of her day and began traveling in her own 72-foot-long railroad car. Columbia's publicity department nicknamed her "Queen of the Blues", but the national press soon upgraded her title to "Empress of the Blues". Smith's music stressed independence, fearlessness, and sexual freedom, implicitly arguing that working-class women did not have to alter their behavior to be worthy of respect. Despite her success, neither she nor her music was accepted in all circles. She once auditioned for Black Swan Records (W. E. B. Du Bois was on its board of directors) and was dismissed because she was considered too rough as 

Question: what style of music did bessie smith perform?
Answer: Blues.