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Breeland: The history of the Bessie Smith Strut

Staff Photo by Angela Lewis Foster/ The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 6/08/15 Deacon Bluz performs Monday on the Bessie Smith Hall Stage at the Bessie Smith Strut.
Staff Photo by Angela Lewis Foster/ The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 6/08/15 Deacon Bluz performs Monday on the Bessie Smith Hall Stage at the Bessie Smith Strut. Staff Photo by Angela Lewis Foster/ The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 6/08/15 Deacon Bluz performs Monday on the Bessie Smith Hall Stage at the Bessie Smith Strut.

By Walter Breeland 4 min read

Riverbend 2015 online

Visit timesfreepress.com/news/riverbend to get complete coverage of the 2015 Riverbend Festival.

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Fierce early evening storms mark abrupt end to Bessie Smith Strut Bessie Smith Strut ‘beginning to feel more segregated’

Organizers of the first Riverbend festival knew they were taking a chance creating a separate jazz and blues event away from Ross’s Landing.

But the crowds came and made the event a big success. The News-Free Press reported on Aug. 26, 1982: “The Riverbend Festival shifted to the heart of Chattanooga on Thursday night . Young and old, black and white, the hip and those earnestly wanting to be hip responded to the festival’s call for unity and community spirit and converged on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for the Bessie Smith Strut, creating a sea of humanity dotted with brightly colored balloons.”

As festival president, I was quoted: “The whole idea of strutting, is you move life. You don’t need to be moving lazy.”