From Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday and Beyond – The Classic Women’s Blues

From Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday and Beyond – The Classic Women’s Blues.– Live at Bristol Folk House Café | Monday 8th June 
Doors: 19:00 | Show: 20:00

Tickets: £8.50/ £10.50 

For many, the image of a Blues singer is of a single man playing a guitar, but the first commercial Blues singers were women. In the 1920s, Bessie Smith pioneered the way as a majestic Blues singer. In her early teens, Billie Holiday heard her, often accompanied by Louis Armstrong. Billie said that she wanted the power of Bessie Smith and the tone of Louis Armstrong.

In this multimedia, live music presentation, Natalie Davis and Dave Merrick will introduce the ‘Classic Women’s Blues’ and perform live some of the songs of Bessie Smith that influenced Billie Holiday and some of the Blues influenced songs that Billie then made her own. There will be live footage of both Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday in performance.

Natalie Davis (vocals), Dave Merrick (Guitar) (Small Days)

Natalie and Dave have been working together for twenty years exploring their love of blues and jazz music from the nineteen twenties to the nineteen sixties and beyond. The musical influences of 'Small Days' range from the early jazz and blues of Bessie Smith, through to the great female jazz vocalists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee. In addition they perform carefully researched multi media events featuring particular artists and themes, with live music, film footage and spoken word. These events have played to sold out audiences in major venues in the South West of the UK. They love to play live and this event features them doing just that. They always play to appreciative audiences wherever they go and most of all they and their audiences have fun!

“The multi-mdeia presentation by Dave Merrick and Natalie Davis on the Origins of Jazz attracted an audience of more than sixty, with an encouraging number of young people. The recordings of New Orleans parade bands and others were used to illustrate the evening with Brendan Whitmore and Natalie Davis adding the live experience. Dave (Guitar) Natalie and Brendan had previously presented a Billie Holiday show at Bath's American Museum, which was a sell out with the demand for tickets exceeding the capacity by quite a margin. This is a welcome development to raise awareness to a new and younger audience of the music that has been so much of Just Jazz readers' lives especially as it is by musicians from the jazz world.”

Robert Coles, Just Jazz (The Traditional Jazz Magazine) (Aug 10, 2016)