At first glance, it may seem odd that women once enjoyed such a high profile in the blues. Pianists Bertha Gonsoulin and Lil Hardin, who worked with King Oliver; pianist Mary Lou Williams of Kansas City and the John Williams and  Andy Kirk bands; and Dolly Jones, whose vaudeville act included jazz trumpet specialties, were part of a small minority of working black female instrumentalists in the 1920s. Chicagoan Lovie Austin was better known, since her name appeared routinely on the Paramount label’s blues releases between 1923 and 1926, both as pianist and as leader of Lovie Austin’s Blues Serenaders, backing up the label’s stars Ida Cox and Ma’ Rainey, and occasionally contributing some group instrumentals on her own. But it was the singers who commanded center stage in the black vaudeville houses that sprang up in America’s major cities during the years of prosperity created by World War I , especially those like the Pekin and Vendome in Chicago, the Lincoln and Lafayette in New York, along with the dozens of clubs, restaurants, and café that emerged alongside them, providing countless opportunities for aspiring talent. The comparatively egalitarian nature of the stage gave young women the opportunity to develop their talents and earn at least a precarious livelihood with them. As the blues became profitable, singers toured the country on the T.O.B.A. (Theather Owners’ Booking Association) artists is for whom they turned around such world, was created from the T.O.B.A. (Theater Owner.s Booking Association) circuit, which linked stages in small towns with those in big ones, allowing residents an occasional evening with their favorites. It’s not to forget that the history of the Blues is inseparable from that of the recording equipment that played a crucial role in the dissemination of popular music in this century. Until 1920, the recording industry was all but closed to black American musicians and entertainers, with a handful of exceptions like some comics and spiritual singers. Strangely, some of the most famous recording companies like  Victor, Columbia and Edison,  had no compunction about recording black artists in Central and South America; black performances from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil and Argentina survive from 1910 and earlier, made during the companies frequent field trips to record and distribute indigenous music from these and other countries of the Americas. In the United States, black music and musical style were usurped and “polished” by white vaudevillians like Marie Cahill, Eddie Cantor, accompanied by record-company house orchestras. Popular white entertainers drew heavily on the compositions of James Bland, Gussie Davis, Creamer and Layton, Shelton Brooks, and other black writers, delivering them either in broad dialect or with other stylistic elements designed to be demeaning. Given these conditions, the appearance of Mamie Smith on records in 1920 was truly a history-making event. She was thirty-seven at the time, a veteran of years of touring as a dancer, chorus girl, and cabaret singer. Her first few records, especially “Crazy Blues”, sold exceptionally well, opening the way for other talented black vaudeville ladies, Edith Wilson, Mary Stafford, Lucille Hegamin, Trixie Smith and, Ethel Waters, to name a few. Except for trips to ports of call below the border, virtually all recording in the early 1920s took place in New York, where sophisticated Harlemites had little interest in the Blues. Perry Bradford reported that W.C.Handy’s band from Memphis was scorned when they attempted to play the blues at Harlem’s Lafayette Theather in 1918. Some minds changed when early successes like “Crazy Blues”, “Down Home Blues” (Ethel Waters) e “Arkansas Blues” (Lucille Hegamin) achieved hit status on records; still, these singers had comparatively little success with the semi blues hybrid tunes turned out by hopeful Broadway writers and publishers throughout the 1920s with the aim of improving on the blues. The real outbreak of the Blues singers happened in the 1923 with Bessie Smith, whose sweet and deep voice was noticed from Frank Walker, Columbia Records producer, who signed her to a one-year exclusive contract, despite the fact that her first record (and her first major hit) was a cover of “Down Heart Blues”. Usually she was accompanied by a piano in order to only make to emerge the broad resonance of her magnificent voice, but in many beautiful recordings she was accompanied by a whole orchestra and the result was the same, grateful. The success of Bessie Smith lasted until the 1930s, when  the Depression swept  the economy world giving rise to the most American important labels bankruptcy. Another Queen of the Blues in 1920s was Ma Rainey who got one of the most popular singers of the country; her voice didn’t have nothing to envy to the voice of Bessie Smith, the only difference between them is that Smith was lucky to record in the studies of New York, with more efficient equipment, therefore her voice arrived to us clearer, without too many noises, than Ma Rainey’s recordings. Other wonderful voices were those of Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Lucille Bogan, Memphis Minnie, Billie Holiday. At the end of 1930s the generation of the great Blues singers began to die out: some of these stars like Bessie Smith and Lucille Bogan died in street accidents, while the repertoire began to change in other directions. The Blues started getting exclusively music made by men; the generation of the great city shouters, of the great guitar players and singers from the South like Hooker, Waters, Hopkins swept away the women who preferred moving to the jazz, soul,  pop music and rhythm and blues. In conclusion, we can assert the time of the Queens of the Blues started at the end of the nineteenth century and finished to the end of 1920s because of several reasons: the Great Depression, the tastes of the public changed and the death of the most famous singers. Today, the Blues voice is mostly male accompanied by amplified electric guitars and instruments, which express above all energy, therefore forgetting often that the Blues, a century ago, meant female sweetness and grace.