[1] Colin Larkin noted in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music that "Bell stands as the most influential Alabama artist in pre-war blues recordings.

An older cousin, Joe Pat Dean, took Bell to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1919, where he learned to play the blues.

In the early 1920s, Bell worked in agriculture and performed as a blues musician, often with his friend Pillie Bolling.

[1][8][9] Bell's own songs of that time include "Squabbling Blues", recorded on April 20, 1930, in which the singer, close to death, asks that if people are unable to agree on who should have his body, then it should be thrown in the sea, so they would "quit squabblin' over me".

[11] Eventually tiring of the life of a traveling blues musician, Bell became a Baptist preacher, married and settled in Montgomery, Alabama.