Bessie Smith

Abstract Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, was appreciated by the jazz musicians of her day, and she used a number of them on her recordings. One of them was Louis Armstrong, who said: already been ordered, but the doctor could see that Bessie was in danger of bleeding to death. He was attempting to put her into the back of his car (she weighed about two hundred pounds at the time), when another car rammed into the back of his car, wrecking it completely. Five minutes later, the ambulance arrived and rushed Bessie to the Negro ward of the G. T. Thomas Hospital in Clarksdale, where one of the town’s best surgeons amputated her arm. She died fifteen minutes past noon that same day. The doctors reported that her death was probably due more to her internal injuries than to the loss of blood.