September 1, 2006
Lesson Plan: “The Weary Blues”: Langston Hughes and Bessie Smith
“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was one of the first of the Harlem Renaissance poets to incorporate jazz, spirituals and the blues into his writing. In the 1920’s Hughes steeped himself in the jazz culture of Harlem and began to weave the rhythm and feeling of Harlem jazz into his poetry. Perhaps the most obvious example of Hughes’ experimentation with new musical forms appears Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues,” published first in 1923 in New York’s Amsterdam News and two years later in Hughes’ first collection The Weary Blues.
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was unquestionably the greatest of the vaudeville blues singers and brought the emotional intensity, personal involvement, and expression of blues singing into the jazz repertory with unexcelled artistry. Baby Doll and After You’ve Gone, both made with Joe Smith, and Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out, with Ed Allen on cornet, illustrate her capacity for sensitive interpretation of popular songs. Her broad phrasing, fine intonation, blue-note inflections, and wide, expressive range made hers the measure of jazz-blues singing in the 1920s. She made almost 200 recordings, of which her remarkable duets with Armstrong are among her best. Although she excelled in the performance of slow blues, she also recorded vigorous versions of jazz standards. Joe Smith was her preferred accompanist, but possibly her finest recording (and certainly the best known in her day) was Back Water Blues, with James P. Johnson. Her voice had coarsened by the time of her last session, but few jazz artists have been as consistently outstanding as she. This photo of Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues” was taken in 1925.
From: The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Ed. Barry Kernfeld. 2nd Ed. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, Inc., 2002.
For the Classroom:
Have students read “The Weary Blues” aloud in class. Discuss in small groups:
1. What did you notice about Hughes’ use of sound in this poem? What kinds of sounds (especially vowel sounds) were repeated?
2. How does Hughes incorporate the song of the Negro piano player into his poem? Why does he set this song off with quotes?
3. Where do you see the influence of the blues in this poem? (Identify specific lines.)
Play Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” for the class. Ask students to freewrite for 20 min. on the following questions. Then hold a class discussion based on their freewrites.:
1. Describe the feeling of Smith’s song? Is she expressing anger, sadness, frustration? If so, to whom are these feelings directed?
2. What are the similarities/differences between Smith’s song and Hughes’ poem?
3. Which lines of Smith’s song are most powerful/memorable. Why?
4. The OED definition of a “backwater” is: “Water dammed back in the channel of a swollen or obstructed river (or mill-race), or that has overflowed into shallow lagoons near it.” Backwater, in other words, is created when certain areas are artificially flooded in order to prevent flooding in other areas. Why did Smith choose to sing about “backwater”? How might “backwater” be a metaphor for the social pressures on blacks (or black women) in the 1920’s?
5. Why do you think Langston Hughes incorporated blues songs like “The Backwater Blues” into his poetry?
CLASS DEBATE:
Hughes ends his poem with the line: “He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.” Consider this alongside Bessie Smith’s line, “Backwater blues done call me to pack my things and go / Backwater blues done call me to pack my things and go / ‘Cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no more.”
Is the musical form of the blues an expression of futility or a source of hope for Hughes and Smith?
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