Clara Smith, b. circa 1894 in Spartanburg, SC, d. February 2, 1935 in Detroit, MI, classic female blues singer. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", even though she had a lighter and sweeter voice than many of her contemporaries. She was not related to the singers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith.
Smith was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. In 1910 she began working on African-American theater circuits and in tent shows and vaudeville. By the late 1918 she was appearing as a headliner at the Lyric Theater in New Orleans, Louisiana and on the Theater Owners Bookers Association circuit. In 1923 she settled in New York, appearing at cabarets and speakeasies there; that same year she made the first of her commercially successful series of gramophone recordings for Columbia Records, for which she recorded 122 songs, working with many other musicians such as Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong, and Don Redman. She recorded two duets with Bessie Smith, "My Man Blues" and "Far Away Blues" (Columbia 14098-D), on September 1, 1925. She recorded Tom Delaney's "Troublesome Blues" in 1927. Her May 1926 recording of "Whip It to a Jelly", was noted as "one of the more overt sexual blues".
In 1933 she moved to Detroit, Michigan, and worked at theaters in revues there until her hospitalization in early 1935 for heart disease, of which she died.
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By Scott Yanow
One of the legendary unrelated Smith singers of the 1920s, Clara Smith was never on Bessie's level or as significant as Mamie but she had something of her own to offer. She began working on the theatre circuit and in vaudeville around 1910, learning her craft during the next 13 years while traveling throughout the South. In 1923 Clara Smith came to New York and she recorded steadily for Columbia through 1932, cutting 122 songs often with the backing of top musicians (especially after 1925) including Louis Armstrong, Charlie Green, Joe Smith, Freddy Jenkins and James P. Johnson (in 1929). Plus she recorded two vocal duets with Bessie Smith and four with Lonnie Johnson. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners" although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors. She performed throughout the country (even appearing on the West Coast during 1924-25) and in Harlem revues during her prime years. Clara Smith was active until shortly before her death in 1935 from heart failure at the age of 40.