Like Mamie Smith, Lena Wilson, Viola McCoy, Etta Mooney, Helen Baxter, Edna Hicks, Esther Bigeou, Lucille Hegamin and the young Ethel Waters, Josie Miles was a vaudeville blues entertainer whose records are intriguing relics of a bygone era. During the early 1920s, with the recording industry in its infancy, Josie Miles and her contemporaries performed catchy pop and blues-inflected melodies within a limited stylistic range, sometimes backed by musicians who were destined to play important roles in the rapid evolution of jazz and popular music. Relatively few of the women who ...