Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out

Known at her peak, and forevermore as 'The Empress of the Blues,' Bessie Smith was possibly the first and greatest of the Blues divas and certainly the first to have hit records.

A protégé of the great Ma Rainey, by the early 1920s, Bessie Smith was already a superstar, backed on record by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Joe Smith, James P.

Johnson, and Charlie Green.