Classic / Vaudeville / Early Recorded Blues

Classic / Vaudeville / Early Recorded Blues covers the first nationally visible blues stars of the record era, especially Black women who moved between tent shows, vaudeville, theater circuits and small jazz-backed recording sessions. The sound is usually vocal-led, urban, theatrical and arranged, with piano, horns or jazz bands supporting singers. It is not the whole origin of blues, but it is the moment when blues became a commercial recorded market.

Blues existed before the record industry captured it, but Mamie Smith's 1920 "Crazy Blues" proved that Black blues records could sell in large numbers. Labels then pursued the "race records" market, recording Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Ida Cox, Clara Smith, Sippie Wallace, Victoria Spivey and many others. These performers brought blues from Southern and vaudeville stages into mass media while negotiating segregation, exploitative contracts and changing entertainment tastes.