To anyone who loves jazz, the name Bessie Smith conjures images of a phenomenal sultry and sassy singer. Born April 15, 1894, (or 1892 depending on the source) in Chattanooga, TN, by the time Bessie was age 9 she had lost both her parents, and an older sister raised her and her siblings. To earn money for their poor household, Smith and her brother Andrew would perform on the streets.

In 1912, she joined a traveling show that one of her older brothers (Charles) had been working in and began her official singing career. Bessie toured in the late 1900s and early 1920s in several black theaters along the East Coast. Eventually, she signed a contract with Columbia Records and her songs "Down Hearted Blues" and "Gulf Coast Blues" sold more than 100,000 copies in a single week, securing her fame and tours with Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and other famous jazz artists. With songs about poverty, oppression and unrequited love, she would become known as "Empress of the Blues."

The Crash

Bessie was a passenger in a car Sept. 26, 1937, driving south along U.S. Route 61 from Memphis, TN. After singing a late-night set, she and her common-law husband Richard Morgan, the driver, were traveling from Memphis to Darling, MS, for the next day's show.

In 1937, with no interstates or expressways, roads were often winding two-lane country roads lit only by moonlight. Near the town limits of Clarksdale, their car, traveling at a high rate of speed, crashed into the back of a truck stopped by the side of the road. The truck left the scene of the accident.

Immediately after the crash, another car coming from the opposite direction arrived on the scene, driven by Hugh Smith, MD (no relation to Bessie).

Treatment at the Scene

Bessie was in a significant state of shock, bleeding profusely from her right arm that was nearly severed from her body, and she had significant right-sided chest-wall injuries. Since Richard Morgan wasn't seriously hurt, Hugh Smith sent him down the road to call for an ambulance. Another version of the story is Henry Broughton, Smith's fishing partner in the car with him, also went to get help. Probably both were sent in different directions to find the closest house with a phone to summon help. Smith remained at the scene attempting to control Bessie's excessive bleeding.

How long it took an ambulance to arrive is unclear. Smith said Broughton returned about a half hour after he left, after finding a house with a phone down the road. The first ambulance arrived shortly after he returned. From the time Bessie was injured to the arrival of an ambulance, it might have been almost an hour.

While Smith was attending to Bessie, another car came down the road and crashed into the back of his car. This caused all the cars, including Bessie's, to spin around. The man and woman in that car were seriously injured, but Smith did not leave Bessie.

At some point, a second ambulance arrived on the scene. It is theorized the driver of the truck left the crash scene, drove into Clarksdale and had that ambulance dispatched. This ambulance would deal with the injured couple from the other car.

Treatment in Hospital

The South was heavily segregated in the 1930s. Clarksdale only had two hospitals at this time - one for whites and one for blacks. Bessie was taken to Clarksdale's Afro-American Hospital, only minutes from the crash and less than half a mile away from the other hospital.

At the hospital, her right arm was surgically amputated; she never regained consciousness and died that morning. She was 43 years old.

If Bessie had received blood volume replacement, she would have had to be typed and cross-matched and a live donor would have had to be found. The concept of banked blood was approximately 6 years away and would not occur until World War II.

Bessie's chest injuries would have not been able to be treated extensively in 1937. Chest X-rays did exist and would have identified injuries, but there wasn't much that could be done for them.

Surgery wasn't an option - neither negative nor positive pressure ventilation, nor endotracheal tubes existed then. Ether was the primary anesthetic; it was poured onto a mask over the patient's face and carried significant risks.