Music
“Lost Your Head Blues” was popular during the last half of the Roaring Twenties. It was sung and written by Bessie Smith, a black singer from Chattanooga, Tennessee who became known as the Empress of the Blues. Frank Music ASCAP published the song in 1926. The style is down home blues from the South with a city feel. The instrumentalists were trombonist Charlie Green and cornetist Joe Smith; the pianist may have been James P. Johnson. “Flow my Tears” was written by John Dowland who was born in England in 1563. He composed and played songs for the lute. This song is a 17th century song and like the other songs of the time is structured for a dance. Some think this was especially designed for a dance called the paven. A beautiful and touching performance is done by the soprano Valeria Mignace with lute player Alfonso Marin. A video of the performance was recorded live at Sint-Pieterskerk, Leuven, Belgium. The pair specializes in weaving the soprano voice and lute into one musical thread.
Performance Style Bessie Smith was a jazz and blues singer. She made the country blues sophisticated and brought the rural blues into the city. She sings the song “Lost Your Head Blues strongly and from deep within her center. Her singing matches the emotions of the song –despair, disappointment and sadness of losing a lover. Smith relates the song to her listeners from her voice intonations and how she uses the lyrics. She does not follow the lyrics exactly but makes it more intimate by leaving out certain words. For example, instead of singing the written lyrics, “Now since you got a lot of money” Smith sings, “Now since you got plenty money.” She replaces “it has changed your mind” with “it done changed your mind” plus she does not make a distinct ‘r’ sound but makes it turn out with a Southern drawl “you-ah.” The audience can understand the words and the emotions of her situation in “Lost Your Head Blues” because her diction is still clear and her emotions emphasize the meaning. Valeria Mignace also sings a song of despair but she uses her soprano range of notes and her voice is could be called light as it matches the sound of the lute. Her voice is just strong enough to be distinguished over the acoustic lute without drowning it out. She also uses her voice to emphasize the tragic and despairing emotions in the lyrics. She pronounces the words very carefully in old English dialect. In the fourth verse she adds a role to the ‘r’ in grief which puts special importance on that word. The audience can understand the lyrics and her facial expressions and tragic intonations fit the lyrics to the beautiful song. She does not sing in the intimate way of Bessie Smith which draws a person in like a best friend; instead Valeria Mignace is telling a story which is personal to all those listening.
Text The text in of “Lost Your Head Blues” has a sound of southern country blues but it is more grown up and more city-like. The melody is repeated by echoing parts of the Smith’s voice singing the lyrics which makes the lyrics seem more sophisticated. The lyrics as written are changed by Smith when she sings the song. She leaves out words or adds words as she pleases. Sometimes, but not very often, she slurs a word or growls an ‘r’ which she seems to do for dramatic effect. She changes the last line of the song “I’m a good gal, but I just been treated wrong” to “I’m a good ‘ol gal, but I just been treated wrong” adding a stronger southern flavor to match the “been treated wrong” phrase. Since Smith wrote the song she probably has no problem changing it in a performance. Out of the fifteen line sin the song “Lost Your Head Blues” five of the lines are repeated. In “Flow My Tears” repletion is also used for dramatic impact and it works really well. In verses 3 and 4 the third line is repeated and the last verse, Verse 5 is repeated. Mignace very strictly follows the wording of the lyrics as they are written. The composer was very careful when coupling a sonnet with a lyre melody. She does not use the old English dialect very heavily but it is noticeable in some places like Verse 3 at the end of Line 1 “Never may my woes by reliev-ed” the ed is pronounced separately from the first two syllables of the word. And in the same verse she uses a rolling ‘r’ in groans, “And tears and sighs and groans my weary days.” But it is in Verse 4 Line 3 that she rolls her ‘r’ in a way that Smith may have done in old England, “And fear and grief and pain for my deserts.” Both songs are mourning and almost painfully said songs about loss.
Instruments The instruments in the background of Smith’s voice in “Lost Your Head Blues” are a trombone, a coronet and a piano. The piano sounds like stride piano. The horns are used to echo Smith’s voice by picking up on the melody that she has just finished in some of the lines. These are instruments that Smith helped make popular with her music. They were very important in the 1920s and 1930s and were commonly seen in jazz club bands. Mignace has a very different relationship with the instrument that joins her in the song. The instrument is the acoustic lute which has a very light and free sound. The song she sang “Flow My Tears” were written especially for the lute voice. Mignace is an opera soprano, she has great discipline. She sings with great depth and emotion but also with great clearness and lightness which seems to intertwine with the lute music.
Conclusions Both styles of singing the blues and the soprano operatic style have some similarities maybe because both songs were very sad and both singers were women. Bessie Smith was the most popular singer of her time; she had crowds of people waiting to hear her sing at her concerts. She was able to introduce the urban crowd to the blues. She mixed it with jazz and vaudeville and the blues became more cosmopolitan. The song “Flow My Tears” was written for lute and soprano voice. Mignace sings the song so magnificently it sent chills up and down my spine. The way she sings the song the listener can understand and feel the emotion of the song although Mignace makes no overtures with the audience like Smith used to do. Mignace’s voice has a lot more range which is amazing.
