Classic Blues 3
Bessie Smith's " Lost Your Head Blues " is a classic example of a blues composition in the twelve-bar blues style that can help us bring this section to a close. This work, recorded in 1926, reveals the vast, wide-ranging voice of Bessie Smith. In his analysis of this work, Craig Wright states that "she was capable of great power, even harshness, one moment, and then in the next breath could deliver a phrase of tender beauty. Moreover, she could hit a note right on the head if she wanted to, or bent, dip, and glide into the pitch, as she does, for example, on the words "days," "long," and "nights" in the last stanza of " Lost Your Head Blues".
In the listening guide that follows, Fletcher Henderson (piano) and Joe Smith (trumpet) back Bessie Smith, and they begin with a four-bar introduction. Then the voice enters, and the twelve-bar harmony starts, one complete statement of the pattern for each of the five stanzas of the text. Each time Bessie Smith sings her melody above the repeated bass, she varies slightly through vocal inflections and off-key shadings. Nevertheless, her expressive vocal line, the soulful improvised response played by the trumpet, and the repeating twelve-bar harmony carried by the piano are the essence of the blues.