The low pitch of a whining trumpet and the light melody of a piano set a distressed mood in the opening counts of Bessie Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues.” Bessie begins to sing of her lost love, her voice lingering around a middle pitch, only to dip to a low note at the end of each line for emphasis. The form of the song follows the “traditional” 12-bar Blues form (A, A’, B) and the first line of each verse ends in a blue note. After the first five verses, the form stays the same, but the melody and rhythm change dramatically after a four count pause. The chords played by the piano become lower, shorter and thus harsher in sound; the trumpet transitions from a high pitched wail to a medium pitched short notes.
This musical change is accompanied by a change in the lyrics. The first half of the song describes a man that’s “got a new way of loving” that is not only good, but the best she’s ever had. “He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong,” Bessie sings, “He can stay at the bottom and his wind holds out so long.” Not only can this man please her romantically, but sexually as well, making her fear that his “sweet somthin’” has got her girlfriend Lou raving about him too. After the pause in the music, Bessie begins to focus less on the pain of being left by her lover and more on the pain of having an empty bed. The “springs are getting rusty, sleeping single” like she does; her voice bellows full and strong, emphasizing her longing for the pleasure that is now gone. The overtly sexual verses such as “He give me a lesson that I never had before/When he got to teachin’ me, from my elbow down was sore” support Angela Davis’ claim in Mama’s Got The Blues that the Blues provided female musicians with a cultural space to openly discuss “problems posed by their heterosexual relationships complicated by expressions of autonomous female sexuality.”
The low pitch of a whining trumpet and the light melody of a piano set a distressed mood in the opening counts of Bessie Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues.” Bessie begins to sing of her lost love, her voice lingering around a middle pitch, only to dip to a low note at the end of each line for emphasis. The form of the song follows the “traditional” 12-bar Blues form (A, A’, B) and the first line of each verse ends in a blue note. After the first five verses, the form stays the same, but the melody and rhythm change dramatically after a four count pause. The chords played by the piano become lower, shorter and thus harsher in sound; the trumpet transitions from a high pitched wail to a medium pitched short notes.
This musical change is accompanied by a change in the lyrics. The first half of the song describes a man that’s “got a new way of loving” that is not only good, but the best she’s ever had. “He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong,” Bessie sings, “He can stay at the bottom and his wind holds out so long.” Not only can this man please her romantically, but sexually as well, making her fear that his “sweet somthin’” has got her girlfriend Lou raving about him too. After the pause in the music, Bessie begins to focus less on the pain of being left by her lover and more on the pain of having an empty bed. The “springs are getting rusty, sleeping single” like she does; her voice bellows full and strong, emphasizing her longing for the pleasure that is now gone. The overtly sexual verses such as “He give me a lesson that I never had before/When he got to teachin’ me, from my elbow down was sore” support Angela Davis’ claim in Mama’s Got The Blues that the Blues provided female musicians with a cultural space to openly discuss “problems posed by their heterosexual relationships complicated by expressions of autonomous female sexuality.”