#jazz hounds

[historybetweenthepages]

Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, 1922. Note teenager Coleman Hawkins, on the right, playing an alto saxophone instead of his usual tenor.

Sourced from the book “Jazz Essential Listening, Second Edition,” 2019

[classicrockandroots]

Happy 100th birthday to Crazy Blues, the first commercial blues recording

Today marks a significant watershed moment in the history of American popular music. On Aug. 10,1920, a group of African-American musicians entered a New Y...

[magictransistor]

Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds, New York, 1920.

[intothebeautifulnew]

Mamie Smith, blues singer and vaudeville performer.  Top photo from the 1910's or 1920's when she toured with her band the Jazz Hounds.  The height of her popularity was in the early 1920's, when her live performances brought her $1500 a week; her recordings were popular among both whites and blacks in both urban and rural areas.  She broke barriers that opened literally closed white club doors to many other African American musicians of the period. By the late 1920's she was eclipsed by other blues performers.  She later appeared in a number of movies in the 30's & 40's that were aimed primarily at black audiences, and in them she still sounds great.  

[charlotteroyer]

Mamie.