What good did Bessie Smith do?

Answer 1

Known as the "empress of the blues," Bessie Smith was a well-known and well-respected jazz and blues singer during the 1920s and 1930s. I am not sure if we can say what "good" she did (she was not a famous philanthropist, for example), but her music made people happy and she entertained millions of people. Living in the age of segregation, she still was able to get her songs heard by both black and white audiences, thanks to phonograph records and then getting on the radio. As one of the first black singers to get on the radio, she was thus an ambassador of the blues and introduced white audiences to this music.