Top jazz pianist Mike Denham is joined by Julia Titus - an actress, poet, singer and songwriter. Among her assets are the voice and verve to put over convincingly the songs of the great blues & vaudeville singer, Bessie Smith.

The phenomenal Bessie Smith hit the big time a century ago. She sang about the things her audiences were living and feeling, decades before hip-hop artists rapped about black working-class life. With uplifting lyrics, sometimes dark, often humorous, Smith and her sister blues women advanced the revolutionary idea that black women's lives mattered.