The Times Free Press interviewd local musicians to talk about the legacy of Bessie Smith.

When Neshawn Calloway moved to Chattanooga in 1994, the name Bessie Smith didn't ring any bells.

"I had no idea who she was," says Calloway, a singer and the choir director at the Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts.

But while earning a master's degree in music education at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, she took an internship at what was then the Bessie Smith Performance Hall and is now the Bessie Smith Cultural Center. One of her jobs was doing research on the hall's namesake, and that's when her love of Smith took hold.

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