Trixie Smith

Trixie Smith (c. 1885/1895 – September 21, 1943) was an American blues singer, film actress, and stage performer born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She came from a middle-class background and attended Selma University in Alabama before relocating to New York City around 1915, at approximately the age of twenty.

Smith began her professional life as a vaudeville and minstrel entertainer, working as a comedian, dancer, actress, and singer in traveling shows. Her Broadway career spanned 1914 to 1916 and included appearances in the musicals Watch Your Step and Step This Way, during which period she performed under the name Bessie Lee. Between 1916 and the early 1920s, she toured as a featured singer in minstrel shows and worked the Theater Owners Booking Association vaudeville circuit, while also recording for Silvertone.

In 1922, Smith made her first recordings for Black Swan Records, among them "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)," written by J. Berni Barbour. The record is of historical significance as the first to use the words "rocking" and "rolling" in a secular context, and it inspired subsequent works including "Rock That Thing" by Lil Johnson and "Rock Me Mama" by Ikey Robinson. That same year, billed as the "southern nightingale," Smith won first place and a silver cup in a blues singing contest held at the Inter-Manhattan Casino in New York, sponsored by dancer Irene Castle. She performed her own composition, "Trixie's Blues," competing against Alice Leslie Carter, Daisy Martin, and Lucille Hegamin.

Among her most recognized recordings are "Railroad Blues" (1925) and "The World Is Jazz Crazy and So Am I" (1925), both of which featured Louis Armstrong on cornet. She recorded with Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra for Paramount Records in 1924 and 1925, and her catalog includes performances accompanied by James P. Johnson and Freddie Keppard. In 1938 and 1939, Smith recorded seven titles, most of them with Sidney Bechet for Decca Records. Her 1939 recording "No Good Man" featured a band that included Red Allen and Barney Bigard.

As her recording career slowed, Smith maintained an active stage presence, appearing in cabaret and musical revues including New York Revue (1928) and Next Door Neighbors (1928) at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. She appeared in Mae West's Broadway production The Constant Sinner in 1931, and two years later performed at the Theatre Guild in its production of Louisiana. In 1938, she participated in the concert From Spirituals to Swing, produced by John H. Hammond.

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. Over the course of her career she made approximately four dozen recordings in total. In later life she was known as Trixie Muse. She 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.