Clara Smith

Clara Smith (c. 1894 – February 2, 1935) was an American 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 City, 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.