Ma Rainey

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Ma Rainey

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey , b. Pridgett (born April 26, 1886 in Columbus , Georgia or September 1882 in Alabama , † December 22, 1939 in Rome , Georgia), was one of the first professional American blues singers and is considered the mother of the blues .

From around 1900 she appeared in various shows with her husband, Pa Rainey, as an early blues singer. In the course of her career she recorded around 100 songs, on which she was accompanied by many well-known jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong , Thomas A. Dorsey and Coleman Hawkins . Her Blues See See Rider became a top 30 hit. She was a mentor to the future Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith and ran two theaters in her hometown of Columbus in her final years.

She was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her work in the field of blues .

Life

Family backgrounds

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was born under the name Pridgett to Thomas and Ella Pridgett, née Allen († 1935). Rainey's correct date of birth as well as the place of birth are not clearly known. She herself gave the date of birth April 26, 1886 and Columbus, Georgia (where she later lived) as the place of birth. The data of the Census of the United States from 1900 to but it was in September 1882 in Alabama born, presumably as her sister Lissie in Russell County . Her maternal grandparents are also from Alabama. Her parents were artists in minstrel shows . After the father's death in 1896, the mother took a job with the Central Railway Georgia .

Rainey is said to have been the second of five children, her brothers and sisters Essie and Thomas and sister Melissa "Lissie" (1886 / 1891-1935) are known. Lissie later worked as a nurse and died in Columbus.

On February 2, 1904, she married the dancer, comedian and singer William "Pa" Rainey (1873 / 76-1919), who, like her, appeared in minstrel shows. They later adopted Danny, born in 1907, who also became a dancer. They separated around 1916, and Ma Rainey later married a younger man.

Rainey was considered bisexual , like the singer Bessie Smith , whose mentor she was at times. They first met around 1912 on the Moses Stokers Show. When Rainey was arrested once in Chicago after flirting with female dancers in her troupe, Smith vouched for her and obtained her release from prison. In Smith, Rainey found a colleague and friend who also sang the blues.

Show career

Gertrude Rainey sang as a teenager. At the age of twelve she had her first appearance, probably in the play The Bunch of Blueberries at the Springer Opera House in Columbus.

From 1900 she herself appeared in minstrel and vaudeville shows. In 1902, in a small town in Missouri , she heard a girl sing a song about being abandoned, which she later described as "strange and poignant". Nobody in her troupe could tell her what kind of music it was, but she added the piece to her repertoire and looked for other pieces of this kind on her subsequent trips. It is generally assumed that she encountered the earliest form of blues here , from now on this formed a focus of her repertoire.

With her husband William Rainey, with whom she performed as a dancing couple and as a singing duo under the name "Ma and Pa Rainey", she sang blues and pop songs. In the mid-1910s, they performed together in a Moses Stokers tent show . This was followed by the shows Tolliver's Circus , The Musical Extravaganza (here under the duo name "Rainey & Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues") and The Rabbit Foot Minstrels , both of which made them popular. After breaking up with Pa Rainey, Ma Rainey appeared on her own show Madam Gertrude Ma Rainey and Her Georgia Smart Set .

In 1920 she was the solo star of the TOBA -Vaudeville tour.

Rainey as a singer

In 1923 J. Mayo Williams helped her to a record deal with Paramount Records , where the "mother of the blues" made about 100 recordings by 1928. The first recording with Lovie Austin and her Blue Serenaders was the Bo-Weevil Blues . The pianist Thomas A. Dorsey later built the band The Wild Cats Jazz Band , with which they went on tour. After Dorsey left the band, she took up with her Georgia Jazz Band . Her only top 30 hit came in January 1925 with the " See See Rider Blues ", in which she was accompanied by Louis Armstrong , Buster Bailey and Charlie Dixon . Other young talents of early jazz who accompanied them on tours as well as on recordings were Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson . Due to the bankruptcy of Paramount in 1932, their songs were not sold again until the 1960s, and in the 1990s all recordings were fully released by Document Records on several CDs.

Later years and death

Rainey lived mostly in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, where she performed at house parties and concerts in addition to her tours. She was accompanied by Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton , among others . She also lived in New Orleans that winter ; Besides Armstrong, her friends also included King Oliver and Kid Ory . From 1935, after the death of her mother, she lived again in Columbus. She did well so that she ran two theaters from her income, the Lyric Theater and the Airdrome, in her hometown of Columbus. Withdrawn from the music business, she also devoted her time to the Friendship Baptist Church.

She died a rich woman in 1939 after a heart attack. Like Pa Rainey and her mother and sister, she was buried in Porterdale Cemetery in Columbus.

Appreciation

Rainey's services to the blues have been recognized time and again over the years. The blues guitarist Memphis Minnie wrote a song in her honor in 1940; literary critic Sterling Brown and poet Al Young paid tribute to her performance and the sense of validity she conveyed to her audience in the form of poetry.

1981 published Sandra Lieb in the publishing University of Massachusetts biography Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey . In 1983 Rainey was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame . In 1990 he was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame .

In 1984, August Wilson's play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was first performed at the Cort Theater in New York , and in 1985 it won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play. The same was filmed in 2019 with Viola Davis as Ma Rainey under the same name by Netflix . The expected publication is expected to take place in autumn 2020.

Discography (selection)

  • 1953: Ma Rainey, Vol. 1 Riverside Records (Jazz)
  • 1953: Ma Rainey, Vol. 2
  • 1994: Complete Recorded Works: 1928 Sessions Document
  • 1998: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1923-1924) Document
  • 1998: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (1924-1925) Document
  • 1998: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 3 (1925-1926) Document
  • 1998: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 4 (1926-1927) Document

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Overlooked No More: Ma Rainey, the 'Mother of the Blues' . In: The New York Times . June 12, 2019, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed August 11, 2020]).
  2. ↑ a b Melissa “Lizzie” Pridgett Nix (1886-1935) - Find ... Retrieved August 11, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Ella Pridgett (Unknown-1935) - Find a Grave ... Retrieved August 11, 2020 .
  4. ↑ William “Pa” Rainey (1873-1919) - Find a Grave ... Retrieved August 11, 2020 .
  5. ^ Sandra Lieb: Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey . Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1981, ISBN 0-87023-334-3 , pp. 18 .
  6. ↑ Rainey, Ma. Retrieved August 11, 2020 .
  7. ↑ a b Ma Rainey. Retrieved August 11, 2020 (American English).
  8. ↑ a b Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939) - Find a Grave ... Accessed August 11, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Dave McNary: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman Starring in 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' for Netflix. In: Variety. June 19, 2019, accessed on August 11, 2020 .
  10. ^ Anne Thompson: Netflix's Approach for Oscars 2021: Skip the Festival Circuit - Exclusive. In: IndieWire. May 27, 2020, accessed on August 11, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Rainey, Ma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rainey, Gertrude; Pridgett, Gertrude (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American blues singer
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1886 or September 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Alabama or Columbus (Georgia) , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1939
Place of death Rome , Georgia , United States