Vaudeville Blues

Vaudeville blues, also called classic blues, is the first blues style to reach a mass audience, performed in the 1910s and 1920s by African-American women singers on the Black vaudeville and tent-show circuits of the United States. Backed by a pianist or a small jazz ensemble rather than a solo guitar, the singers delivered composed twelve-bar blues and popular song material with theatrical projection, comic timing and dramatic gesture. Its stars, *Ma Rainey*, *Bessie Smith* and their peers, became the first blues recording artists, and their records defined the music for the wider public.