On February 14, 1920, Smith recorded "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" for the
Okeh label in New York City, after African-American songwriter and bandleader
Perry Bradford persuaded
Fred Hager to break the color barrier in black music recording. Okeh Records recorded many iconic songs by black musicians. Although this was the first recording by a black blues singer, the backing musicians were all white. Hager had received threats from Northern and Southern pressure groups saying they would boycott the company if he recorded a black singer. Smith's biggest hits were the August 10, 1920 recordings of a set of songs written by
Perry Bradford, including "
Crazy Blues" and "It's Right Here for You (If You Don't Get It, 'Tain't No Fault of Mine)", again for Okeh Records, A million copies were sold in less than a year. and was selected for preservation in the
National Recording Registry of the
Library of Congress in 2005. Although other African Americans had been recorded earlier, such as
George W. Johnson in the 1890s, they were performing music that had a substantial following among European-American audiences. The success of Smith's record prompted record companies to seek to record other female blues singers and began the era of what is now known as
classic female blues. She made some records for
Victor. She toured the United States and Europe with the band Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds as part of ''Mamie Smith's Struttin' Along Review''. She was billed as "The Queen of the Blues", a billing soon one-upped by
Bessie Smith, who was called "The Empress of the Blues". Mamie found that the mass medium of radio provided a means of gaining additional fans, especially in cities with predominantly white audiences. For example, she and several members of her band performed on KGW in Portland, Oregon in early May 1923 and received positive reviews. Recording lineups of the Jazz Hounds included (from August 1920 to October 1921) Jake Green, Curtis Moseley,
Garvin Bushell,
Johnny Dunn, Dope Andrews, Ernest Elliot,
Porter Grainger, Leroy Parker and
Bob Fuller, and (from June 1922 to January 1923)
Coleman Hawkins,
Everett Robbins,
Johnny Dunn, Herschel Brassfield,
Herb Flemming,
Buster Bailey Cutie Perkins,
Joe Smith,
Bubber Miley, and Cecil Carpenter. While recording with the Jazz Hounds, she recorded as Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Band, comprising George Bell, Charles Matson,
Nathan Glantz, Larry Briers,
Jules Levy, Jr.,
Joe Samuels, together with musicians from the Jazz Hounds, including Hawkins, Fuller and Carpenter. == Film career and later years ==