Bessie Smith was a kind of roughish sort of woman. She was good-hearted and big-hearted and she liked to juice, and she liked to sing her blues slow. She didn't want no fast stuff. She had a style of phrasing, what they used to call swing--she had a certain way she used to sing. I hear a lot of singers now trying to sing something like that. Like this record that came out a few years ago--"Why Don't You Do Right?"--they're trying to imitate her.

We didn't have any rehearsals for Bessie's records, she'd just go with us [Buster Bailey, Fletcher Henderson] to the studio around Columbus Circle. […] This, by the way, applied not only to Bessie but to almost all the blues singers. [... They] might have something written out to remind them what the verse was but there was no music written on it. [...]

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For Bessie, music was just a living. She didn't consider it anything special. She was certainly recognised among blues singers--a shouter, they called her. They all respected her because she had a powerful pair of lungs. There were no microphones in those days. She could fill up Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden or a cabaret. She could fill it up from her muscle and she could last all night. There was none of this whispering jive.