1. Like Finding a Friend

Jackie Kay reflects on her love of blues singer Bessie Smith.

She explores the life of the Empress of the Blues and considers the effect the icon had on her as she grew up as a black girl adopted by white parents.

Orphaned by the age of nine, Bessie Smith sang on the street to support her siblings and was swept into travelling shows as a young woman. Facing extreme racial prejudice, she brawled under the influence of bathtub gin and had tumultuous love affairs with men and women. She also sold hundreds of thousands of records and became a genuine superstar.

Mixing biography, fiction, music and memoir, Jackie Kay remembers the electric thrill of identification when, as a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, she was first heard the music of the Empress.

Abridged in five parts by Rosemary Goring.

Read by Jackie Kay with Adjoa Andoh

From 2016 to 2021, Jackie Kay was the Makar - Scotland's poet laureate.

Producer: Eilidh McCreadie

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2021.