Clara Smith

Clara Smith (March 13, 1894 – February 2, 1935) was an American blues singer and Broadway performer, born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to parents Selena and William Smith. Billed as the "Queen of the Moaners," she was noted for a lighter and sweeter vocal quality than many of her contemporaries. Smith had no siblings and received no formal schooling, though census records indicate she could read and write. Blues historians believe she was introduced to traveling tent shows that passed through Spartanburg during her youth, an exposure that likely shaped her interest in performance.

Smith entered professional performance in 1910, working African-American theater circuits, tent shows, and vaudeville. By 1918 she had risen to headliner status on the Theater Owners Booking Association circuit throughout the Southern states, and by 1923 she had performed at prominent venues including the Lyric in New Orleans, the Dream Theatre in Columbus, Georgia, the Bijou Theatre in Nashville, and the Booker T. Washington Theatre in St. Louis. That same year she relocated to New York City, where she performed at cabarets and speakeasies before signing with Columbia Records. Her Columbia debut in 1923 launched a commercially successful run of recordings made alongside musicians including Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong, and Don Redman. She was not related to fellow singers Bessie Smith or Mamie Smith, though she and Bessie Smith recorded two duets together — "My Man Blues" and "Far Away Blues" (Columbia 14098-D) — on September 1, 1925.

Over the course of her recording career, Smith cut 122 sides, all for Columbia Records, with her sales figures surpassed only by Bessie Smith. She began her recording work primarily as a singer of somber ballads before moving toward more uptempo material. Her May 1926 recording of "Whip It to a Jelly" was noted as one of the more overtly sexual blues recordings of its time, and her 1927 recording of Tom Delaney's "Troublesome Blues" added to a catalog that spanned multiple volumes of her complete works later compiled by Document Records in 1995. Her reach extended across the United States, including performances on the West Coast, which was considered unusual for a blues singer of the era.

During her performing years, Smith encountered a young Josephine Baker and took on a mentoring role, hiring Baker at age thirteen as her dresser and is credited with giving Baker her entry into the recording business. The two are thought by some contemporaries to have had a romantic relationship, having been referred to as "lady lovers" by a colleague.

Smith's Broadway career included an appearance in the 1930 play Roll, Sweet Chariot. By 1933 she was working in Detroit, Michigan, performing in theater revues. She died of heart disease on February 2, 1935, in Detroit, one month before what would have been her forty-first birthday.