Trixie Smith

Trixie Smith (c. 1885/1895 – September 21, 1943) was an American blues singer, film actress, and Broadway performer. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, to a middle-class family, she attended Selma University in Alabama before relocating to New York City around 1915, at approximately the age of twenty. She subsequently found work in cafés and theaters across Harlem and Philadelphia.

Smith launched her career as a vaudeville and minstrel entertainer, working in those circuits between 1916 and the early 1920s as a comedian, dancer, actress, and singer in traveling shows. During this period she also performed on Broadway under the name Bessie Lee and recorded for Silvertone. She worked the Theater Owners Booking Association vaudeville circuit before making her first recordings for Black Swan Records in 1922. Among those early recordings was "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)," written by J. Berni Barbour, notable as the first record to use the words "rocking" and "rolling" in a secular context. The record prompted lyrical responses from other artists, including "Rock That Thing" by Lil Johnson and "Rock Me Mama" by Ikey Robinson.

Also in 1922, billed as the "southern nightingale," Smith competed in a blues singing contest at the Inter-Manhattan Casino in New York, sponsored by dancer Irene Castle. Performing her own composition "Trixie's Blues" against competitors Alice Leslie Carter, Daisy Martin, and Lucille Hegamin, she took first place and a silver cup. She recorded with Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra for Paramount Records in 1924 and 1925, and her recordings from this era feature accompaniment from musicians including James P. Johnson and Freddie Keppard. Two of her most recognized recordings, "Railroad Blues" and "The World Is Jazz Crazy and So Am I," both from 1925, featured Louis Armstrong on cornet.

As her recording career shifted, Smith sustained her work through cabaret and musical revues, including New York Revue and Next Door Neighbors, both staged at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem in 1928. Her Broadway career spanned from 1931 to 1940 and encompassed several productions. She appeared in Mae West's 1931 Broadway production The Constant Sinner, and two years later performed in the Theatre Guild production of Louisiana. Additional Broadway credits include Pre-Honeymoon, the drama Big White Fog, and the play Brass Ankle.

Smith appeared in five films: The Black King (1932), Drums o' Voodoo (1934), Birthright (1938), God's Step Children (1938), and Swing! (1938), two of which were directed by Oscar Micheaux. In 1938 she also appeared at the concert From Spirituals to Swing, produced by John H. Hammond. Her later recordings included seven titles made in 1938 and 1939, among them sessions with Sidney Bechet for Decca Records in 1938. In 1939 she recorded "No Good Man" with a band that included Red Allen and Barney Bigard. Over the course of her career she made approximately four dozen recordings in total.

Known in later life as Trixie Muse, Smith died in New York on September 21, 1943, following a brief illness, at the age of 48. In 2017, her recording "Jack I'm Mellow" was used as the theme song for the television comedy series Disjointed.