Bessie Smith -- Baby Won't You Please Come Home 1923
Bessie Smith (1892 or 1894 --1937) was the most popular and successful female American blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, and a strong influence on subsequent generations, including Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone and Janis Joplin.
This is one of her first recordings in 1923 with pianist Clarence Williams.
In no other way than living the kind of violent, hard-drinking street life she sang about, could Bessie Smith have inspired in her audiences the powerful empathy that ultimately won her the title, "Empress of the Blues." Throughout her career, Bessie was respected for being a strong, independent African-American woman with tremendous talent and determination. She expressed great pride in her culture, and gladly participated in its earthy pleasures, regularly indulging her taste for alcohol and sex to extremes. How ever much others tried to run roughshod over her, Bessie refused to submit to the slightest abuse without a knock-down, drag-out fight. With few exceptions, she held to her musical ideals with equal tenacity. Though musically illiterate, she regularly collaborated with her pianists to compose and write down her music and her words frequently touched on pertinent events in her life. Her performance style, too, derives considerably from her own personal and cultural attributes.
Song lyrics :
If your man is nice and sweet
Serving you lots of young pig meat
Oh yes, keep it to yourself
If you know you are standing fast
Got him worried where you at
Oh yes, keep it to yourself
He don't fall for no one
He don't call for no one
He don't give nobody none of his L.O.V.E.
'Cause it's yours
If your man is full of action
Givin' you lots of satisfaction
Oh yes, keep it to yourself
If you gotta have a kiss and a sweet
Makes me week way down in my knees
Oh yes, keep it to yourself
If he tries to treat you right
Give him lovin' every night
Oh yes, keep it to yourself
He don't fall for no one
He don't call for no one
He don't give nobody none of his L.O.V.E.
'Cause it's yours
With your man you got the best go
Don't broadcast it on nobody's radio!
Oh yes, keep it to yourself