Blues empress Bessie Smith delivered one of her finest, most expressive performances on “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” a classic hard times blues recorded for Columbia in New York on May 15, 1929. Smith evocatively hummed some of the lines with a band including cornetist Ed Allen and pianist Clarence Williams. The song had been recorded earlier by Pine Top Smith and Bobby Leecan, but it was Smith’s rendition that became an influential classic. It has been recorded by hundreds of artists including Nina Simone, Louis Jordan, LaVern Baker, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton and Bobby Womack.
In his book “Bessie,” Smith biographer Chris Albertson suggested that her heightened emotions in the studio may have prompted by bad newspaper reviews that morning of her only Broadway play, “Pansy.” Vaudeville performer Jimmie Cox was credited with writing the song. Some of its key lyrics however had earlier appeared on sheet music in 1906 in a song called “All In Down and Out” with words by R.C. McClendon (Cecil Mack).