Ffeil / File 2/25 - Bessie & Billie

The African-American blues singer Bessie Smith, nicknamed the 'Empress of the Blues', was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in April 1894. Both her parents died when Smith was a young child and she and her brother Andrew busked in the streets in order to help out their impoverished family. She began her career as a dancer with a small travelling music troupe but was brought to public awareness as a singer when she launched her recording career with Columbia Records in 1923. Her stormy marriage to Jack Gee, punctuated with affairs on both sides, came to an end in 1929, after which Smith began a relationship with lifelong friend Richard Morgan which would last until her death. Smith died following a horrific road accident on 26 September 1937, having never regained consciousness. Despite her sometimes controversial song lyrics, which focused on social issues such as poverty and intra-racial conflict, as well as female sexuality, and behaviour which some found crass and ill-bred, Bessie Smith was considered one of the greatest singers of the 1920s and 1930s, living proof that working-class people, in particular women, did not need to change either their attitudes or their demeanour in order to succeed.

The African-American jazz singer Billie Holiday was born Eleonora Fagan in Philadelphia in April 1915, the daughter of an unmarried teenage couple. Her early years were characterised by a dysfunctional home life, which culminated in Bille dropping out of school aged 11 and, at 13, briefly working as a prostitute alongside her mother. Nicknamed 'Lady Day' by her friend and music partner saxophonist Lester Young, Billie began singing in Harlem night-clubs prior to launching her recording career in 1935. Her collaboration with jazz pianist Teddy Wilson produced the hit song What A Little Moonlight Can Do, which was to become a jazz standard. By the late 1940s, Bille reputation, along with her vocal abilities, deteriorated due to alcohol and drug abuse. She died of cirrhosis of the liver on 17 July 1959. Billie Holiday's improvisational vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, would pioneer a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She won four Grammy Awards, all posthumously. Holiday was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973 and into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame in 2017.

Jazz singer Cynthia Utterbach was born in New Jersey but has lived in Europe since 1994. Her original ambition was to become a Classical singer, later turning to popular 'Top Forty' music, then finally, in the early 1980s, to jazz. She performs throughout Europe as a jazz vocalist at festivals and clubs. In 2003, she was cast in the Golden Globe Award-winning film Rosenstrasse, for which she also wrote lyrics for two of the songs on the soundtrack. Cynthia Utterbach cites her main influences as the American jazz singers Sarah Vaughan and Morgana King.

The African-American blues singer Joanne Bell was born in Riverside, California. She made her musical début aged 4 in a production of Singin' in the Rain, while her acting career includes the rôles of Carmen and Tosca. She currently resides in Hamburg, Germany.