Mamie Smith : Crazy Blues (1920)

Singer, pianist and actress, Mamie Smith, had already recorded a couple of sides for the Okeh label before she cut 'Crazy Blues', which is generally accepted to be the first vocal blues on record. Mamie Smith was one of the first 'Classic' blues performers and certainly one of the first commercially successful artists in this genre. These days, we tend to look back at the early Blues and think predominantly of male solo artists with a guitar and a sad song coming out of the Mississippi Delta; however, this is not what people were buying to play on their Victrolas in the 1920s. What people were spending money on were recordings by female artists such as Ma Rainey, Ida Cox or all the Smiths (no relation), Mamie, Bessie and Clara. These discs haven't been held in such high esteem by history as the sides by the likes of Robert Johnson, Son House or Skip James but they definitely sold a lot more units.