Boweavil Blues - Bessie Smith

Boweavil Blues - Bessie Smith on youtube
Recorded 7th April 1924 by Columbia Records

"Bessie Smith (Columbia) 1924 was believed to be first performed by Charly Patton as "Mississippi Boll Weevil Blues" in 1909 and was covered by a number of early blues artists including Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. It tells the story of the impact of the Boll Weevil on the southern cotton crop at the turn of the twentieth century which along with southern racism, Jim Crow laws, employment vacancies created by WWI led to the first Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban South and North."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIskE8wE18M