Bessie Smith and Gertrude ‘Ma Rainey are perhaps the most recognisable names of women blues singers of the 1920s. But they weren’t the only ladies struggling to gain acceptance in a male dominated world. Marmie Smith, Ethel Waters were just two of approximately one hundred women who performed in vaudeville, stage shows, Minstrels and small clubs and cabarets during that decade. Marmie's second recording of, Crazy Blues on General Phonograph's Okeh label, was an unexpected success in 1920 and spurred a rapid movement by record companies, songwriters, singers, and musicians to capitalise on women's blues. Certainly, that recording is noted as opening the flood gates for lady blues artists. Songwriters such as William C. Handy (1873–1958), Perry Bradford (1893–1970), and Clarence Williams (1898–1965) were pioneers in obtaining recording contracts for the lady artists of the time. It is ironic, therefore, that the two most popular, experienced, and accomplished blues singers at that time, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, who had developed their talent and repertoires on the vaudeville circuit in the first two decades of the twentieth century—were not first recorded until 1923. On this page we celebrate the almost endless list of lady performers, the famous and not so well known who left us such a legacy of music.

This time featuring
Ethel Waters.

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Ethel Waters - Underneath the Harlem Moon (1933).