The Empress of the Blues in all her decade-long majesty: her full Columbia output plus a series of interviews with her niece Ruby Smith spread over 10 CDs paired in card sleeves in a tidy box. Elegantly presented and superbly re-engineered, this compilation can only be judged as a gift for today's students of this music. It really should be enough to say it's all here so don't hesitate. Buy now.

Bessie was a force of nature, hard-living and turbulent in her private and performing lives, with a stately, imperious delivery, her rich, passionate contralto plumbing unique emotional depths, whether in lamenting the machinations of me or bemoaning the vicissitudes of life. There was no else like her. Signed by Frank Walker of Columbia Records as a counterpart to Mamie Smith, whose 1920 hit recording of ‘Crazy Blues’ had set a blues craze in train, Bessie's 1923 record of ‘Gulf Coast Blues’ with its composer Clarence Williams at the piano in sole accompaniment, sold 780,000 copies in the first six months after its release. If African-Americans were the main purchasers, white jazz musicians certainly knew her worth and valued her as a steady stream of releases emerged and sold.

Already a star well before Columbia signed her, Bessie's recordings gradually attracted accompanists from the top of the jazz tree, most notably Louis Armstrong, Joe Smith and James P. Johnson, culminating finally in the John Hammond-organised session with Frankie Newton, Jack Teagarden and Chu Berry in November 1933. Just to hear her singing ‘Gimme Me A Pigfoot and A Bottle of Beer’ with these stars remains one of the greatest pleasures in jazz.

In September 1937, Bessie was mortally hurt in a car accident. She was 42. Who knows how her career might have turned out had tragedy not intervened? Suffice it to say that she continues to exert an extraordinary hold on blues (and jazz) students to this day. Ruby's reminiscences describe some pretty colourful episodes and the whole package is a joy.