Reckless Blues

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Reckless Blues
June 22, 2011
By Mark Peikert
New York Press

Before Billie Holiday, there was Bessie Smith—which Bessie herself reminds us in a glaring anachronism during The Devil’s Music: The Life & Blues of Bessie Smith, a new bio-musical that has opened Off-Broadway. Long before Lady Day’s chirp-wail took jazz fans by storm, Bessie Smith was belting out the blues with such utter conviction she was referred to as “Empress of the Blues.”

In Angelo Parra’s play (directed by Joe Brancato), we understand just why Smith was so deserving of that honorary title. An orphan by the age of 9, Smith endured poverty, racism, enough bad relationships (including a disastrous marriage) to put the ladies of Sex and the City to shame and a prolonged and nasty custody battle over her adopted son, which she lost when her bisexuality and heavy drinking were revealed during the trial.

All those heartaches and Smith’s eventual rise to superstardom, when she became the most popular female singer, selling 780,000 copies of her first single for Columbia in six months—during the 1920s—are recounted with gusto and “life is a banquet” glee by Miche Braden in The Devil’s Music. But Parra smartly makes plenty of room during Smith’s increasingly drunken reminiscences for the songs that made her famous, hard-driving blues numbers riddled with double entendres that Braden milks for all they’re worth.

Set in a buffet flat, private establishments for African Americans to eat and drink and do just about everything else they liked for entertainment, The Devil’s Music finds Smith on what turns out to be the last night of her life, drinking heavily and singing her heart out after the Great Depression made the blues—and her career—redundant. In addition to her powerful vocals, Braden also brings a nuanced and un-showy understanding of drunk acting, a welcome relief from the usual excesses. She neatly charts Smith’s level of intoxication, veering from rage to full-throated laughter in a few seconds, before closing a painful chapter of her life by pouring her fury and disappointment into one of Smith’s signature songs.

Backed by a three-piece band consisting of bass (Jim Hankins, who also sets and wraps up the scene for us), piano (Aaron Graves) and saxophone (Keith Loftis), all of whom serve as foils to Smith at some point or another, Braden threatens to tear the roof off the theater when it comes to delivering songs like “St. Louis Blues” or “Gimme a Pigfoot.” Boisterous, assured and big-voiced, Braden turns what could have been a start-stop bio play and ensures that it becomes a cohesive whole. Her Smith isn’t a victim of her own excesses or society’s prejudice; she’s a brass, good times broad whose insistence on having a good time in the face of adversity isn’t self-destructive as much as it is life affirming. That’s a pretty accurate description of the blues, too, come to think of it.

The Devil’s Music: The Life & Blues of Bessie Smith

Open run, St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), www.penguinrep.org; $36.50–$69.50.

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