Recorded in New York on August 10, 1920, by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds — the first blues recording by an African American singer. Written by Perry Bradford, it proved the purchasing power of the Black audience the sheet-music industry had ignored, selling hundreds of thousands of copies within months and opening the "race records" market. This is the moment the blues became a commercial music.
In 2014 the New Orleans street-jazz band Tuba Skinny performed the song at the French Quarter Festival. Erika Lewis's long, faithful vocal almost exactly restages the 1920 original, carrying the voice of the "mother of the blues" to a new generation.