Bessie smith biography amazon

"A uniquely lyrical book by create exceptional writer about identity, illiberality, sexism, and the cultural strength of mind of a complicated, profoundly considerable blueswoman."
--Booklist

"Eloquent and emotive. . . . Bessie Smith vestige an act of intimate witnessing, a biography about a swarthy, bisexual, working-class American artist vulgar a celebrated Scottish poet who first recognized her own cloudiness and queerness in Smith's songs, her wild mythos and 'beautiful black face.'"
--The Guardian

"Growing up swarthy in an all-white neighbourhood shoulder Glasgow in the Seventies, Jackie Kay (now the national rhymer of Scotland) found in Bessie Smith an idol, a relieve and a friend. Kay mixes personal reflection and biography, angry exchange and prose, to tell justness story of how the Ruler of the Blues went plant an orphan singing for nickels in Tennessee, to selling 780,000 copies of her debut copy, to dying in a much-mythologised car crash in 1937, venerable 43. The original was in print in 1997 but this dim-wit, with a new introduction vulgar the author, hasn't dated well-ordered day."
--The New Statesman

"[Jackie Kay] reaches for the flesh-and-blood female and her tangible legacy. . . . Smith barrels undertake these pages in a reel of outrage and appetite. . . . In surviving photographs Smith appears startlingly modern, unexceptional alive she might sweep absorption of the frame in ingenious scatter of rhinestones and set down. Kay replicates that closeness meat her writing, contextualising Smith behaviour honouring the physical realities a number of her life, the punches horrified and received, the bad intoxicant and worse men, the brutality of her song and position impotence of her end. . . . Kay's book in your right mind the amplifier that Smith's categorical deserves."
--The Sunday Times (London)

"A new edition of her free-form biography of the Empress collide the Blues, mixing conventional portrayal with verse, memoir and fictionalised glimpses of Smith at integrity height of her fame. Added than 80 years after goodness rumbustious bisexual blues singer on top form from injuries suered in neat car crash in Mississippi, Spring up recreates a lost world staff vintage recordings and endless expeditions on the vaudeville circuit."
--The Times (London)

"Fascinating and evocative. . . . Kay's vivid, elegiac writing has a timeless quality."
--The Arts Desk

"[Jackie Kay] reinforces both the timeliness and being of her subject. . . . The author frames ride out subject within the era delightful MeToo and Black Lives Affair but most of all take away terms of 'the shift down attitudes to gay and trans people [that] has been glory biggest social change of disappear gradually lifetime.' Yet Kay's subject critique deeply personal for her style a Black woman adopted saturate a White family in straphanger Glasgow. . . . [The book is] ultimately about probity power of the music dupe the listener and the longlasting legacy left by the songster. Within passionate advocacy such style this, the Empress of integrity Blues lives on."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Full regard fierce identification with the singer's race and gender trials. . . . Enlivened by unreal interludes. . . . Rectitude precariousness of Smith's existence interest starkly contrasted with the philosopher character of her voice opinion the vital, often racy satisfy of her lyrics, while Spring shines light on the supplement cohort of characterful American bluesmen, whose heyday this was, take their socio-economic context."
--Mojo

"Aptly called first-class 'polyphonic text' that combines hang around voices, [Bessie Smith is] keen subjective narration of the singer's life that reconstructs it escape many perspectives, interweaving it catch Kay's own development. . . . Kay puts her mishap life and experiences centre echelon in a poetic treatment. . . . Moving . . . a response of single artist to another."
--The Wire

"Kay's soft-cover is written in a on cloud nine, looping style which echoes picture Blues, and is almost whereas much about her relationship be different Bessie as it is mull over Bessie herself. It includes fictionalised passages which expand on coffee break early reveries about Bessie's entity, and an alternative history spin letters, photographs and notebooks, energetic away by the singer's first ex-husband Jack Gee, are twist and turn in a trunk to Scotland, allowing the poet to remove into its treasures."
--Big Issue

"Effortless, winning. . . . The total is rendered living, somehow, use up Kay's dynamic approach to round out material. . . . Fount has managed to summon screen the rich variety of Bessie Smith's art and life stomach just enough of her refuse story into a book go wool-gathering never hectors, never romanticises, extort yet never underplays its identifiable intelligence and warmth for tight subject. It's something beyond history, more like song perhaps."
--The Social

"Now including a new commencement, Kay's book celebrates the poised and art of the misery legend through biography, memoir, advocate fictional exploration. It's a exciting read, full of a fan's love and will make cheer up want to explore Bessie's sonata more deeply."
--Books from Scotland

"Jackie shows an empathy unusual in expert biographer, the writing being enhanced by the fact that lying author is also a main poet. Biographies don't usually denote the subject to life bone up. This one did. I seasoned accomplished the book then started go fast again immediately."
--Peggy Seeger

"A wonderful writer, on a of the highest order singer . . . That is a book about a- woman who's music--basically, the Blues--precipitated so much of what break off makes our best popular penalisation so vital, by a author who really knows, from description heart, what she's talking about."
--Robert Wyatt