The forgotten story of America s first black superstars
By Dorian Lynskey17th February 2021
In the 1920s US, glamorous, funny black female singers were the blues first – and revolutionary hitmakers. Why were they then relegated to the sidelines, asks Dorian Lynskey.
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On Valentine s Day 1920, a little over a century ago, a 28-year-old singer named Mamie Smith walked into a recording studio in New York City and made history. Six months later, she did it again.
The music industry had previously assumed that African Americans wouldn t buy record players, therefore there was no point in recording black artists. The entrepreneurial songwriter Perry Bradford, a man so stubborn he was known as Mule , knew better. There s 14 million Negroes in our great country and they will buy records if recorded by one of their own, he told Fred Hagar at Okeh Records. When a white singer dropped out of a recording session at the last minute, Bradford convinced Hagar to take a chance on Smith, a