September 26, 1937: Bessie Smith dies in a car crash in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on U.S. Route 61 -- not far from the crossroads where Robert Johnson allegedly made his deal with the Devil. "The Empress of the Blues" was 43. Johnson would be dead within a year himself.
There are 2 legends surrounding her death. One is that a white ambulance driver refused to pick her up, and she died waiting for an ambulance from a black hospital to arrive. This is not true. The problem was that, given how rural the area was and the time period, it took half an hour for someone -- oddly, a surgeon, who did his best to help though he was white -- to arrive, for his assistant to get to a house with a telephone, and call the black hospital for an ambulance, and for the ambulance to arrive. But even if that ambulance had been right behind her car when the crash happened, she never would have made it.
The other legend is that she lay in an unmarked grave until 1970, when, just before her own death as it turned out, Janis Joplin paid for a proper headstone. That one is true.
While she made many recordings that survive, the only known film of Bessie Smith is this performance in the 1929 film St. Louis Blues.
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September 26, 1937 was a Sunday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 7-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio each went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Jimmie Foxx and Fabian Gaffke hit home runs for the Sox. Jack Wilson outpitched Bump Hadley.
* The New York Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-3 at the Polo Grounds. Lou Chiozza hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Mel Ott went 0-for-4.
* The Boston Bees (as the Braves were known from 1936 to 1940) beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 17-3 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Tony Cuccinello went 2-for-5 with 2 home runs, a walk, and 4 RBIs. Gil English went 5-for-7. Debs Garms went 4-for-7 with 2 RBIs.
* The Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators were tied 7-7 after 11 innings at Griffith Stadium in Washington, when the game was called due to darkness.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-3 and 4-3 at League Park in Cleveland. Bob Feller was the winning pitcher in the 2nd game. He was only 19 years old. Over the 2 games, Hank Greenberg went 2-for-6 with 2 walks.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Cincinnati Reds, 5-4 and 2-1 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Over the 2 games, Paul Waner went 3-for-9 with an RBI, and Lloyd Waner went 2-for-9 with a walk.
* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns, 4-3 and 4-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 6-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. That was the 1st game of a doubleheader. The Cubs led the Cardinals 8-5 in the 8th inning of the 2nd game, which was then called due to darkness. At this point, Cincinnati was the only team that had lights.
And there were 3 games played in the NFL:
* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-7 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. In 1940, the football Pirates became the Pittsburgh Steelers.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Cleveland Rams, 9-7 at Ebbets Field. The football Dodgers folded after the 1945 season. The Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946.
* And the Philadelphia Eagles and the Chicago Cardinals played to a tie, 6-6 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
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