Mamie Smith broke one of the music world's strictest color lines in August 1920 when she became the first African-American to sing a blues on record.

        Before then, songs in the relatively new blues style were exclusively sung by white vaudevillians like Sophie Tucker and Al Jolson.

Mamie Smith | ZOOM |

        Ms. Smith, born in Cincinnati on May 26, 1883, cemented her place in music history when she recorded “Crazy Blues.” Her high, vibrato-laden style was more light opera than deep blues, but the song became a major hit, selling more than a million copies and launching a craze that included Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and the other “classic” blues singers.

        A professional performer by age 10, she was touring the eastern United States at 17 with the Smart Set, a black vaudeville troupe.

        In 1912, she married singer Smitty Smith and moved to New York, working nightclubs as a singer, dancer and pianist.

        In 1918, Perry Bradford, a pioneering African-American songwriter and producer, hired Ms. Smith to star in his revue, Maid in Harlem. In 1920, he convinced Okeh Records to record his discovery. In August, at her second session, Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds recorded Mr. Bradford's “Crazy Blues,” starting the jazz and blues revolution of the '20s.

        She became a major vaudeville and recording star until the Depression derailed her career.

        In 1939, a comeback seemed imminent as Ms. Smith starred in Parade in Harlem, singing “Harlem Blues” with Lucky Millinder's big band.

        But the movie couldn't reignite her career. Within a few years, health problems led to her admission to Harlem Hospital, where she died in 1946. Cincinnati's most famous early blues and jazz legend is buried in Staten Island.

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