I am resolute in my belief that no one, let me repeat, no one, in modern Chicago blues fashioned blues narratives like Byther Smith.  Period.  And unfortunately, Smith’s name is probably one of the least known in all of contemporary blues. 

At one point, Smith was the blues guitar master who presided over the 1970s proceedings at Chicago’s south side blues mecca, Teresa’s nightclub.  His was blues art steeped in an enthralling combination of socially current, individual, and scorching masterpieces containing up-to-date lyrical content, blues guitar designs, and textured, wide-ranging stories centering on the topics of financial means, love, personal difficulties, and victories. 

Hailing from Monticello, Mississippi, a location in Lawrence County in the central lower third of the state, Smith came into the world in 1932.  Disadvantage came early, as Smith was orphaned, and ended up being raised by his uncle and aunt.  With them, early on he was moved by gospel music.  At a fairly young age, he moved to Arizona where he found work on a cattle ranch.  By this time, his musical juices were already flowing, because his aunt had purchased him a bass guitar to detour his interest away from another curiosity, boxing.  While working at the ranch, he played in country and western bands on the weekends.

By the mid-1950s, Smith was married, and he and his wife Etta Mae made the decision to move northeasterly to Chicago at the prompting of his cousin, acclaimed blues artist J.B. Lenoir.  Arriving in Chicago, Lenoir taught Smith how to play guitar, and this led to Smith playing the Chicago blues joints on the weekends beginning in the 1960s, with him learning more blues guitar along the way from artists like Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Hubert Sumlin.  Smith also found a place in the band of blues giant Otis Rush as his rhythm guitarist.

During this period, Smith recorded a few singles for the C.J. Records and Be Be Records labels, including “Money Tree”, probably his most well-known blues tunes.  But by the mid-1960s, Smith returned to his gospel leanings, playing with the Gospel Travellers.  When he did return to the blues in the 1970s, Smith was in-residence at Theresa’s nightclub where he often joined forces with Junior Wells, in addition with others.

For the bulk of his adult life though, Smith dedicated himself to the pledges of holding down a day job, raising his offspring, and cultivating his family life.  As such, he was able to evade the perils of the typical entertainer’s nightlife existence. 

However, and ironically, much of Smith’s recording career transpired during the period when he was working his day job and rearing his family.   Between 1983-1994, Smith recorded nine blues albums for the Grits, Mina Records, Blue Phoenix, JSP Records, Bullseye Blues, and Black And Blue labels; that’s how strong Smith’s work was that he was able to so prolifically record despite not being a full-time bluesman. 

In 1995, Smith retired after a long tenure (25 years) at Chicago’s Economy Folding Box Company, and this ten allowed him to focus solely upon his blues music.  He went on the record five additional albums for the Delmark Records, Fedora, and Black And Tan labels from 1997-2008.

What Smith was able to accomplish with his blues prowess was to take full advantage of his substantial, singular faculty to forge unfailingly solid blues songs with lyrics constructed upon extraordinary analogies.  This allowed him to convey a blues song in a fashion that spoke to the human condition in an original passionately mesmerizing approach. 

Smith’s guitar energies were feverish in their ferocity, and when joined with his intense vocal fortes (often marked with penetrating hollers), the result rendered his modern-day blues manifestly inimitable, and prototypes for all blues players of his day, and for blues fans, too.  His blues was something completely different.

It is shocking the urban insistence that Smith brought to his blues craftsmanship.  His blues configuration undercurrents imparted upon the listener the ability to somewhat experience the tension of Smith’s Chicago experience and its vivid ramifications upon his existence.  Smith’s blues art was gripping and incontestable. 

Though Smith toiled in relative obscurity, he was a virtuoso bluesman, one whose prominent aptitudes should have afforded him a place of greater stature in the blues world.  It can be argued that the entirety of Smith’s blues catalog is without peer; it is that robust.   Smith was astonishingly able to frame his contemporary blues output into packages that supplied poignant topics with the blues vehicles they needed to be heard and understood.  His blues ranks as that of the highest art form, most certainly.

Smith was inducted into the Chicago Blues Hall Of Fame in 2018.

Smith passed away in 2021 in Chicago, and was buried in Jayess, Mississippi.