The Death of Bessie Smith is a 1959 one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee, written in 1959 and premiered in West Berlin the following year. The play is based around a series of conversations between staff of a 'Whites-only' hospital in Mississippi on the day the famous blues singer, Bessie Smith is brought in (and denied admittance) following a car crash. Template:Unsourced A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is someone who writes dramatic literature or drama. ... Edward Albee, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961 Edward Franklin Albee III (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright known for works including Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, and The Sandbox. ... The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that typically follows a twelve-bar structure. ... Bessie Smith (July, 1892 – September 26, 1937) is largely regarded as the most popular and successful blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, and by some as the most influential performer in blues history. ...

The incident that gives the play its title and around which the action centers is based upon a myth that was largely accepted as fact until convincing evidence to the contrary appeared in the original 1972 edition of Bessie, a biography of the singer ^[1]

As widely believed, Bessie Smith did die following a car crash, but she was never refused admittance to a white hospital, which is the premise of Albee's play. She was taken directly to the Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where she died some seven hours later. The myth of racial discrimination had its origin in an article by jazz writer/producer John Hammond, that appeared in the November 1937 issue of Down Beat magazine. John Henry Hammond (December 15, 1910 – July 10, 1987) was a record producer, musician and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s. ... Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to jazz. ...

The character of Bessie Smith is only referred to in Albee's play and does not appear on stage. In early performances Albee did not even wish music or pictures of her to be used.