This wasn't just a song this was the beginning of an industry. Through the soft, shuffling scratches of needle to delicate 78, you can hear the start of big business. It's hard to know when the erasure starts, but it could be like this: Mamie Smith recording "Crazy Blues" in 1920. Not just for music lovers (though who couldn't be persuaded by the promise of new sounds?) but for those who see the faded lines where someone once stood, their shape quietly erased over the years. But the work of uncovering, recovering and remembering that these books provide is vital. The path Smith mentions has never been a smooth one, and it's one where names and histories are often obscured. Smith's book comes amid the recent release of several other books written by Black women celebrating Black women in music, including Daphne Brooks' 2021 book Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound and Maureen Mahon's 2020 book Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll. "I feel very much to explain things to anyone, I want to share with them - my joy, and facts and details about these women." "One of the best parts about writing Shine Bright was to merge the memoir with the biography," Smith says.
Smith has, in her own way, been leading others down that path for over 30 years, in her work as a writer and editor for several publications, including Vibe and Billboard, and currently as the host of the podcast Black Girl Songbook, a show that Smith says, "exists to give Black women the credit that we deserve." Shine Bright, which releases on April 19, is part memoir, part history of musical icons like Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin, but it also shines light on some of music's more unheralded figures like The Dixie Cups and Deniece Williams. "I feel a commonality with women who try to make things, women who are loud, women who say things, women who write things, talk about themselves, sing about themselves," Smith says in an interview with NPR. This path she describes is one that positions the music not just as entertainment, but as an integral part of Smith's life and kinship with other Black women. That question is an acknowledgement of the countless Black women who have shifted and shaped American popular music, and whose influence on Smith makes up the subject of Shine Bright.
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In her forthcoming book, Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, Danyel Smith writes, "Who else but a Black woman would lead me, or at least take me on trial runs?"
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