Me and Bessie is a musical revue about the life and career of blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 singer Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...

. The basically one-woman show, conceived and written by Will Holt

Will Holt

Will Holt is an American singer, songwriter, librettist and lyricist known first and primarily as a folk performer during the 1950s and 1960s and as an interpreter of the music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in performances and recordings with Martha Schlamme...

 and Linda Hopkins

Linda Hopkins

Linda Hopkins is an African American actress and blues and gospel singer. She has recorded classic, traditional, and urban blues, and performed R&B and soul, jazz, and show tunes, all with distinction and style since the 1950s....

 and performed by Hopkins, features songs by Lil Green

Lil Green

Lil Green was an American blues singer and songwriter.-Life and career:Originally named Lillian Green, she was born in Mississippi; after the early deaths of her parents, she went to Chicago, Illinois, where she began performing in her teens and where she would make all of her recordings.Green was...

, Clarence Williams, Henry Creamer

Henry Creamer

Henry Creamer was an American popular song lyricist. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and died in New York. He co-wrote many popular songs in the years from 1900 to 1929, often collaborating with Turner Layton, with whom he also appeared in vaudeville.Creamer was a co-founder with James Reese...

, Andy Razaf, and Jimmy Cox

Jimmy Cox

Jimmy Cox was an American songwriter famous for his Depression-era hit "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"....

, among others.

It originally was presented at Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre is a historic theater in Washington, D.C., used for various stage performances beginning in the 1860s. It is also the site of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 from November 1-17, 1974, then produced by the Center Theatre Group

Center Theatre Group

Center Theatre Group is a non-profit arts organization located in Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest theatre companies in the nation, programming subscription seasons year-round at the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre...

 and staged by Robert Greenwald

Robert Greenwald

Robert Greenwald is an American film director, film producer, and political activist.-Early life:Greenwald was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ruth and Harold Greenwald. He attended the city's High School of Performing Arts...

 at the Mark Taper Forum

Mark Taper Forum

The Mark Taper Forum is a 739 seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles...

 from April 4 through May 3, 1975.

The Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production also was directed by Greenwald, with special dance sequences for two characters, identified only as Man and Woman, choreographed by Lester Wilson

Lester Wilson

Lester Wilson was an American dancer and choreographer. Wilson attended the Juilliard School. Bob Fosse cast him in a 1963 revival of Pal Joey at the New York City Center. Wilson toured London with Sammy Davis, Jr. in "Golden Boy". Lester's best known choreography was the 1977 movie Saturday...

. Following two previews, it opened at the Ambassador Theatre

Ambassador Theatre (New York)

The Ambassador Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 219 West 49th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.Designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp for the Shuberts, the structure is unusual in that it is situated diagonally on its site to fit the maximum number of...

 on October 22, 1975. It transferred to the Edison Theatre

Edison Theatre

The Edison Theatre was a legitimate Broadway theatre located in the Edison Hotel at 240 West 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan. Officially a 499-seat Broadway house, the Edison Theater actually had 541 seats....

 on December 3, 1975 and remained there until December 5, 1976, running for a total of 453 performances. Between September 24 and its closing, it ran in repertory

Repertory

Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...

 with Oh! Calcutta!

Oh! Calcutta!

Oh! Calcutta! is an avant-garde theatrical revue, created by British drama critic Kenneth Tynan. The show, consisting of sketches on sex-related topics, debuted Off-Broadway in 1969 and then in London in 1970. It ran in London for over 3,900 performances, and in New York initially for 1,314...

In and Around Town, a weekly critical guide for entertainment in New York

New York (magazine)

New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

, included a capsule review for Me and Bessie that read, "The raw fervor of Linda Hopkins's blues singing is all that matters here, and it's enough. Unfortunately, the show is also burdened with a silly script by Will Holt, which consists mostly of having Miss Hopkins disavow the fact that she's Bessie Smith with all the fervor of a Kennedy disavowing politics."

Linda Hopkins was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience

Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience

The Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience was created to honor those Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and legitimate not-for-profit theater productions which, due to their unusual nature, cannot be categorized in the regular musical and play categories...

 but lost to The Norman Conquests

The Norman Conquests

The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour...

. The production held the record for the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history until Golda's Balcony

Golda's Balcony

Golda's Balcony is a play by William Gibson.It follows the trajectory of the life of Golda Meir from Russian immigrant to American schoolteacher to a leader of international politics as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. Much of its focus is on the period surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when...

, starring Tovah Feldshuh

Tovah Feldshuh

Tovah Feldshuh is an American actress, singer and playwright.-Early life:Terri Sue Feldshuh was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the daughter of Lillian and Sidney Feldshuh, who was a lawyer. She was raised in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent community in Westchester County and graduated...

, surpassed it by forty performances.

Song list

Act 1

• I Feel Good
• God Shall Wipe All Tears Away
• Moan You Mourners
• New Orleans Hop Scop Blues
• Romance in the Dark
• Preach Them Blues
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find
• T'Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do
• "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)"
• Put It Right Here
• You've Been a Good Ole Wagon
• Trombone Cholly
• Jazzbo Brown
• After You've Gone

Act 2

• There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
• Empty Bed Blues
• Kitchen Man
• Mama Don't 'Low
• Do Your Duty
• Fare Thee Well
• Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
• Trouble
• The Man's All Right