Researchers confirm blues legend Mamie Smith was born in Cincinnati

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - It's been discovered that a trailblazer who helped change the course of American music history was born in Cincinnati. In fact, Mamie Smith was born at 14 Perry Street in downtown Cincinnati, which is now 308 Perry Street -- right across from the Duke Energy Convention Center. Smith stands at the beginning of the blues. Now that we know that she was born in Cincinnati, the city has a claim on being the birthplace of the blues. Blues enthusiast Joe Busam showed off his copy of Smith's 1920 recording "Crazy Blues," the first-ever blues song to be recorded by an African-American woman, selling millions of copies. "She was an important part of the recording industry embracing black artists," said Busam. John Jeremiah Sullivan, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, has been researching the life of Smith. The Mercantile Library provided Sullivan with the opportunity to delve into his research and create a platform to publicize the new discovery. "It made it possible to find her real birth certificates and that had the names of her biological parents and the address where she was born. And once you have data like that, you can feed it back into the census, back into city directories," said Sullivan. Smith was born in in 1891. Previously, researchers thought 1883 but Sullivan alone discovered the exact location and correct date of her birth. Smith sang the blues in the Queen City until she was at least 15. "Really a Cincinnati girl through and through and a product of the African-American community here, which was just artistically rich in so many ways," said Sullivan. These parts of her life had once been a mystery but they're now coming together. "That is a real source of pride for me, you know, because I've always admired the jazz singers and the blues artists from the 1920s, and Mamie's a big player in that group," said Busam.