That's the blues as defined by most people today, but in the early 20s before Son House, Charlie Patton and the rest growled out their gritty delta variant, the blues had a different sound and image. In the first half of the 20s, atypical blues artists were women. Usually they dressed in flapper styles and crooned songs of sorrow to jazz accompaniment. In these early days women ruled this new musical form, it wasn't until later that men dominated and all but wiped out the blues women's commercial and artistic impact.

The woman's reign in the blues was from about 1923 to 1927. Starting in 1920 with Mamie Smith's recording "Crazy Blues", an achievment considering race records had not yet come into their own at this time. "Crazy Blues" was the first-ever blues recording, making the first blues recording artist a woman.

Bessie Smith

It was in 1923, though, that the blues became popular with Bessie Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues". Bessie started her career in early minstrel shows and went to recording auditions as early as 1921 but was evidently turned down for sounding too raw and earthy. Columbia Records producer Frank Walker(who later discovered Hank Williams) saw potential in Bessie and signed her to a one-year contract. Her Columbia recordings were hits, much to the dismay of Edison, Black Swan, Emerson, and Okeh, all companies who turned her down. Walker also proved himself to be a good marketer when he paired Bessie's "Downhearted Blues" with pianist Clarence William's "Gulf Coast Blues". The record sold almost 800,000 copies eclipsing Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" from 1920. Bessie's other hits include "Alexander's Ragtime Band" & "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight".

Bessie usually recorded under optimal studio conditions, but occasionally her recordings are backed by less-than-fair jazz bands who are heard over her voice too well for their own good.

Most women blues singers, like Bessie, would cut a fine line between Vaudeville and the blues. But it was Bessie who took the rural blues and fused them with pop sensibilities of the time.

Ma Rainey with Thomas Dorsey on piano

The other great female blues singer of the 20s was Gertrude Pridgett "Ma" Rainey. Rainey like Bessie was a veteran of minstrel and traveling tent shows. In a rare interview she told folk scholar John W. Work that she first heard the blues in 1902. That would be a year earlier than when W.C. Handy first heard it in Mississippi. Rainey said she heard a young girl singing in a strange fashion about how she lost her man. Rainey later used it in her own performances at the tent shows and when asked what is was, she replied, "It's the blues." So it's quite possible Rainey first coined the term and not Hart Wand as assumed.

Rainey's blues were also backed by a jazz band like most women blues singers of the time. But unlike Bessie Smith and the rest, Rainey had a deep, throaty voice and was linked closer to the rural south of Charlie Patton than the vaudeville flapper style of the Jazz age.

Rainey's records were not as sophisticated, technically speaking, as, say, Bessie Smith's, but her lyrics were far superior, especially on "Bo Weavil Blues", a song about love lost.