Mamie Smith

Mamie Smith was a singer from Cincinnati who started out performing in traveling vaudeville shows. In 1920, she recorded "Crazy Blues" for Okeh Records with musicians like trumpeter Johnny Dunn and pianist Perry Bradford, who also wrote the song. That recording is often cited as the first blues record by an African American woman.

She recorded other songs like "It's Right Here For You" and "Wang Wang Blues" during that period. The musicians on her sessions changed, but the sound usually mixed blues with the jazz and vaudeville styles she'd picked up on the circuit.

Smith kept performing through the 1920s, though she faced the same discrimination many Black artists did at the time. Her early recordings helped open doors for other singers who wanted to record blues and jazz.