The Devil’s Music: The Life & Blues of Bessie Smith
You may have heard of the legendary Bessie Smith. You may have even seen the HBO movie a few years ago with Queen Latifah in the title role, but I guarantee you have never seen the self-professed ‘Empress of the Blues’ portrayed like this.
You feel it from the opening moment of the show, when musician Anthony Nelson lets loose, filling the auditorium with his saxophone that reaches down and almost rips out your soul. You see it when Miss Bessie Smith comes barreling through the front door and dares you to not greet her adoringly and acknowledge her greatness. You know from note one that you’re in for one hell of a ride with this production.
Portrayed by the fabulous Miche Braden in Mosaic Theatre Company’s season opener, The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, proves to be not just an ordinary run of the mill bio-play. Braden portrays ‘The Empress’ as a larger than life, singing, drinking, rapping, storytelling, hallucinating one woman force of nature. She’s a smart ass s**t talking no-nonsense hell of a woman who stared down the Ku Klux Klan and refused to enter through any club’s back door.
What most don’t know is that Smith toured up and down the east coast during the Depression era, becoming one of the highest paid musicians in America, and the highest paid Black musician anywhere. She rented a sleeper car and used it as a non-discriminating hotel.
Her musicians, played by a team of lovable sidekicks throughout the play are bassist Jim Hankins, saxophonist Anthony E. Nelson Jr., and pianist Gerard Gibbs. They try with little or no success to keep the incorrigible Smith subdued and grounded in reality, but Miss Bessie will have none of that.
The Devil’s Music not only captures the soul of Ms. Smith’s music but it haunts you with the demons churning away inside her soul. It was heartache and pain that made her music what it was, and The Devil’s Music makes that pain abundantly clear. Her songs, from “T’aint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do” and “St. Louis Blues” to “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” prove Bessie not only had a song in her heart but an incurable ache in it too. She tries to sing her way through the struggle to mix music, family and love. However, it was that failed attempt that gives her an indelible place in music history. Ironically, the more she sings into her struggle, drinking on every song, the more the devil himself seems to take her by the throat, choking the life’s breath out of her.
Unfortunately, as the Roaring Twenties hit head-on with the 1929 Stock Market crash, so too did the ‘Empress of the Blues’ and her larger than life persona.
The Devil’s Music plays through October 1, at Mosaic Theater Company of DC performing at the Atlas Performing Arts Center – 1333 H Street NE, in Washington, DC. For tickets, call the box office at (202) 399-7993 ext. 2, or purchase them online.
