Bessie Smith and the Riverside Hotel Bessie Smith was probably the world’s most famous female blues singer during her time. Sadly, in 1937, she was seriously injured in a car wreck near Clarksdale, MS. She was taken to the GT Thomas Hospital for African Americans, where she would soon pass away. Several years later, that hospital would be converted to the Riverside Hotel...where many of the best names in blues history would go on to stay. Today, the room where Bessie Smith died is preserved as a