Ma Rainey Georgia Jazz Band pose for a studio group shot c 1924-25 with 'Gabriel', Albert Wynn, Dave Nelson, Ma Rainey, Ed Pollack and Thomas A Dorsey. (Photo by JP Jazz Archive/Redferns/Getty Images)
didn’t invent the blues, but her full-throated evocations of joy, strength and humor in the face of pain and oppression helped define the emerging genre in the early years of the 20th century. Her defiant, independent spirit and unapologetic bisexuality made Rainey an early feminist icon and figurehead for the nascent LGBTQ community. Through the nearly 100 recordings made in her lifetime, she blazed a trail for generations of musicians — female and otherwise — ready and willing to bare their soul.
The 1984 Broadway production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson introduced the vocal powerhouse to a whole new era of music lovers. On dec 18, a long-awaited film adaptation of the play premiered on Netflix. Directed by five-time Tony winner George C. Wolfe — who has also directed the critically acclaimed films Lackawanna Blues and Nights in Rodanthe — and stars Oscar-winner Viola Davis as the titular diva co-starring Chadwick Boseman. The plot unfolds over a long hot summer afternoon in a Chicago recording studio, as Rainey struggles to wrest creative control from her white management and headstrong horn player, Levee, played by Chadwick Boseman.
MA RAINEY
Exploring issues of racial and sexual identity in 1920s America, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom conjures the music of the era by blending composer Branford Marsalis’ original score with soaring renditions of Rainey’s classics. For many, these tracks gave the blues its sound and its soul. “White folks hear the blues come out, but they don’t know how it got there,” Rainey proclaims in Wilson’s original script. “They don’t understand that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ‘cause that’s a way of understanding life.”
In honor of the upcoming film, here are 20 fascinating facts about the woman they call the Mother of the Blues.
Ma Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia on April 26th, 1886 — or so she claimed. Details about her early years are disputed, and some census reports indicate that she may have shaved a few years off her “official” age. Whatever the case, she began singing professionally when she was barely into her teens. She gave one of her first public performances in 1900, when she sang and danced with a troupe called the Bunch of Blackberries at the Springer Opera House. It was just one of many historic concerts held at the opulent venue, which had previously hosted bandleader John Philip Sousa, writer Oscar Wilde, and Wild West shooter “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
In 1904, the singer married fellow performer William Rainey, a man several years her senior. A familiar face on the vaudeville touring circuit, Rainey was known to many by the playful honorific, “Pa.” It wasn’t long before his new wife Gertrude picked up a corresponding nickname, “Ma.” After the couple separated in 1917, Rainey retained the “Ma” moniker, insisting that it was short for “Madame.” According to New Orleans jazz player Danny Barker, a contemporary of Rainey’s, those two letters denoted a tremendous amount of respect. “‘Ma,’ that means the tops,” he’s quoted as saying in Angela Y. Davis’s book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. “That’s the boss, the shack bully of the house, Ma Rainey. She’d take charge. ‘Ma Rainey’s coming to town, the boss blues singer.’ And you respect “Ma.”
Rainey was performing at a tent show in rural Missouri when she heard the sound that changed her life. A young woman arrived with a guitar and began singing a haunting song of lost love and heartbreak. The ghostly tune sounded strange to Rainey’s ears. It was the first time she’d heard the blues, an evocative musical gumbo that blended gospel spirituals with African musical customs. She was so captivated by the song that she learned it that very day and immediately incorporated it into her set as a showstopping encore. Rainey would frequently affirm that it was she who dubbed this new music “the blues.” However, most historians have cast some doubt on this claim, maintaining that the term was in use long before Rainey became an enthusiastic proponent of the genre. Excusing her slight exaggeration, there’s no question that Rainey played an oversized role in popularizing the genre and that her nickname “Mother of the Blues” — and epithet etched onto her tombstone — is well earned.
“She possessed listeners,” Ma Rainey’s longtime musical director Thomas A. Dorsey wrote in his unpublished memoirs. “They swayed, they rocked, they moaned and groaned, as they felt the blues with her.” Her unique brew of black folk music and vaudevillian staging proved infectious to people of all races. According to Rainey’s biographer Sandra Lieb, these performances “offered to whites a glimpse into black culture far less obscured by white expectations and offered blacks a more direct affirmation of their cultural [power].” Rainey’s shows were among the first to be integrated in Southern states where segregationist Jim Crow policies were the law of the land. Seating inside the tent shows were technically divided according to race, but by the time the music began, blacks and whites often sat — and swayed — side by side.
Rainey was also ahead of her time when it came to stage costumes and, in fact, many of her outfits would make modern pop divas like Cher and Lady Gaga proud. Rainey stepped into the limelight each night having transformed herself into a dazzling display of showy jewelry and outrageous adornments. Her golden satin gown was topped off with a sky-high diamond tiara and a necklace made of $20 pieces. Towering heels added serious height to her five-and-a-half-foot frame, and an unruly horsehair wig threatened to obscure her expressive face.
With rings on each finger, she strode the
boards clutching an ostrich plume in one hand and a gun in the other. Even her teeth were capped with gold to match her proudly ostentatious outfit. As Thomas A. Dorsey recalled: “When she started singing, the gold in her teeth would sparkle.”
Her penchant for diamonds and other finery caused a serious problem while on tour. According to Thomas Dorsey, she once purchased jewelry from some men in Nashville. Unfortunately, the diamonds were stolen, and Rainey unknowingly transported stolen goods across state lines. The law caught up with her after she wrapped a performance in Cleveland a few days later. “The officer [came] up there and took her off the stage [and] arrested her. Gonna take her back to Nashville after she did the last show,” Dorsey recalled. To make matters worse, they had a gig in Pennsylvania the following day, so the band got creative and tried to pass off an imposter. “She had a heavy voice but she couldn’t sing like “Ma”. We decided to put some of “Ma’s” clothes on this girl.” The ruse failed to fool anyone, and soon the hall erupted with cries of: “That ain’t none ‘o Ma Rainey!”
Although New York producers had signed local talent like Clara Smith, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith, it took several years for the Chicago-based Rainey to get her due. In December 1923, she was scouted by pioneering African American producer J. Mayo Williams and signed to Paramount Records, famous for being the home of future legends Son House, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Rainey would record 92 songs during her five years on Paramount, over a third of which she wrote herself. Her 78 RPM records for “New Boweavil Blues,” “Don’t Fish in My Sea,” and “Dead Drunk Blues” sold in such fantastic quantities that some credit her for saving the label from bankruptcy. Paramount showed their thanks by promoting her extensively, referring to her in breathless ad copy as “the Songbird of the South,” “the Gold-Neck Woman of the Blues,” "the Paramount Wildcat," and, of course, “the Mother of the Blues.”
Ma Rainey’s obituary failed to appear in the paper of record after her death in 1939, but The New York Times rectified this oversight with a belated passage in 2019 as part of their “Overlooked” series. “With her unapologetic lyrics, Rainey proudly proclaimed her bisexuality and helped to mainstream black female narratives in a musical style that later became a nationwide craze,” the eulogy states. Though her death certificate officially listed Rainey as a “housekeeper,” the Times headline references her most enduring legacy as “Mother of the Blues.”
Early recording technology failed to capture the power of Ma Rainey live, and the singer herself knew it. She decided to have a little fun during her debut at Chicago’s Grand Theater in April 1924. The curtains opened to reveal a comically oversized gramophone placed front and center in the blue spotlight. “Ma was hidden in a big box-like affair built like an old Victrola of long ago,” Thomas Dorsey recalled. “A girl came out and put a big record on it. Then the band picked up the ‘Moonshine Blues.’ “Ma” sang a few bars inside the Victrola. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the spotlight with her glittering gown that weighted twenty pounds and wearing a necklace of five, 10 and 20-dollar gold pieces. The house went wild. Ma had the audience in the palm of her hand.” Rainey took seven curtain calls that night.
In 1927, Paramount Records’ biggest star released the suggestive “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which would become one of her signature tunes. The song took its title from a popular dance that emerged in New Orleans at the dawn of the 20th century, named after a predominately African American neighborhood in Detroit known as Black Bottom. The wild gesticulations, which could be done solo or with a partner, were said to be modeled after those of a cow stuck in deep, sticky mud. The steps were punctuated by what historians Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon describe as a “a slap on the rear end” for good measure. The Black Bottom had swept the Southern states in 1919 when composer Gus Horsley and Perry Bradford published “The Original Black Bottom Dance,” the “official” song of the dance craze. The lyrics included helpful instructions to the uninitiated.
After Broadway stars Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola performed the dance (with some adjustments by choreographer Billy Pierce) in the musical comedy revue George White’s Scandals of 1926, the Black Bottom became a national sensation, overtaking even the Charleston as the Jazz Age jive of choice. Decades later, Ginger Rogers would perform the Black Bottom in 1942’s Roxie Hart, on which the musical Chicago was based. Judy Garland would also perform a unique rendition in the 1954 version of A Star Is Born.
At the dancing school... Board illustrating dancing steps of the Black Bottom dance - 1927 (Photo by Ullstein Bild/Getty Images)
Over the course of her travels, she performed on bills with the likes of Bessie Smith, T-Bone Walker, and Tampa Red. While passing through New York in October 1924, she recorded several songs at Paramount’s “Recording Laboratory” with a young Louis Armstrong — then working as an in-demand session musician, — sitting in on cornet. According to some, Rainey’s talents made a sizable impact on Armstrong, and he incorporated many of her mannerisms into his own stage persona. “His facial expressions, his singing, his very stage presence were all vivid reminders of “Ma”,” recalled Thomas Fulbright, an actor and contemporary of the pair. A decade later, when Armstrong traveled down to Georgia to perform at a theater run by Rainey, she put him up in her own home.
Louis Armstrong in 1955 (Photo by JP Jazz Archive/Redferns/Getty Images)
The most influential song Rainey recorded with Louis Armstrong was her version of the future rock & roll mainstay, “See See Rider.” The song is told from the perspective of a spiteful lover who learns that her man is two-timing her. In classic Ma Rainey tradition, the woman in the song doesn’t succumb to heartbreak, but instead vows to buy herself a pistol and “kill my man and catch the Cannonball. If he won't have me, he won't have no gal at all!” Hundreds of artists have covered it, including Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels (who got to Number 10 with the song in 1965) and the Animals (who also hit Number 10 the following year). Elvis Presley famously used the song as his electrifying concert opener throughout the early Seventies, later issued on a trio of live albums: 1970s On Stage, 1973’s Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, and 1977’s posthumous Elvis in Concert.
Elvis Presley performs on January 14th, 1973 in Honolulu.
(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Though she never publicly identified as bisexual, Ma Rainey’s venerated as an LGBTQ trailblazer for her lyrics that strongly hint at romantic relationships with women. Some blues singers took care to dispel rumors of their sexual orientation, but Rainey did very little to hide it. In fact, she seemed to confirm them proudly with 1928’s “Prove It on Me Blues,” among the last songs she ever recorded. “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,” Rainey sang. “They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men. It’s true I wear a collar and tie. Makes the wind blow all the while.” Paramount’s advertising for the song was even more provocative, featuring a drawing of Rainey in a three-piece suit and fedora chatting with two women on a street corner while a policeman suspiciously eyes her nearby. “What’s all this? Scandal?” asks the copy.
Angela Y. Davis cites the song as “a cultural precursor to the lesbian cultural movement of the 1970s, which began to crystallize around the performance and recording of lesbian-affirming songs." The performer Teresa Trull recorded a version of “Prove It on Me” for her 1977 album Lesbian Concentrate.
While many of Ma Rainey’s songs touch on standard blues motifs of abandonment and infidelity, only a handful describe a woman broken down by her lying, cheating man. On the contrary, Rainey’s characters are likely to cheat right back. This is the case in many of her songs, notably “Oh Papa Blues,” with its memorable closing verse.
Tellingly, the subject of marriage is never tackled with much enthusiasm. Rather than serve as the passive object of their husband’s neglect or abuse, Rainey’s characters aren’t shy about defending themselves and laying down the law. In “Sleep Talking Blues,” for example, Rainey’s character (somewhat humorously) threatens to kill her husband if he ever dares to utter another woman’s name in his sleep.
Rainey’s canon is notable for offering an undisguised look at the issue of spousal abuse. Songs like “Black Eye Blues” may make for uncomfortable listening today due to the tragicomic nature of the lyrics, but simply vocalizing the topic was a radical act. “Women’s blues suggest emergent feminist insurgency in that they unabashedly name the problem of male violence and so usher it out of the shadows of domestic life where society had kept it hidden and beyond public or political scrutiny,” Angela Y. Davis writes.
One of Ma Rainey’s closest companions was fellow singer Bessie Smith. If Rainey was the Mother of the Blues, then Smith — said to be six years younger — was the Empress. Their rivalry was purely a friendly one, however, it’s suspected that the pair were more than just friends.
Neither would ever admit it, but there’s circumstantial evidence that Rainey and Smith were romantically involved for a time. “I believe she was courtin’ Bessie, the way they’d talk,” Rainey’s guitarist Sam Chatmon later said. Both women were certainly fond of risqué lyrics and daring parties. “They were the original wild women in American music,” says Bob Santelli, the Executive Director of the Grammy Museum.“Many blues women led Christian lives on Sunday morning but for the rest of the week were pretty out there and robust in terms of their sexual lives and their escapades and their gambling and their drinking and even their drug use.”
Blues singer Bessie Smith poses for a portrait circa 1924.
(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Though she never publicly identified as bisexual, Ma Rainey’s venerated as an LGBTQ trailblazer for her lyrics that strongly hint at romantic relationships with women. Some blues singers took care to dispel rumors of their sexual orientation, but Rainey did very little to hide it. In fact, she seemed to confirm them proudly with 1928’s “Prove It on Me Blues,” among the last songs she ever recorded. “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,” Rainey sang. “They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men. It’s true I wear a collar and tie. Makes the wind blow all the while.” Paramount’s advertising for the song was even more provocative, featuring a drawing of Rainey in a three-piece suit and fedora chatting with two women on a street corner while a policeman suspiciously eyes her nearby. “What’s all this? Scandal?” asks the copy.
Angela Y. Davis cites the song as “a cultural precursor to the lesbian cultural movement of the 1970s, which began to crystallize around the performance and recording of lesbian-affirming songs." The performer Teresa Trull recorded a version of “Prove It on Me” for her 1977 album Lesbian Concentrate.
While many of Ma Rainey’s songs touch on standard blues motifs of abandonment and infidelity, only a handful describe a woman broken down by her lying, cheating man. On the contrary, Rainey’s characters are likely to cheat right back. This is the case in many of her songs, notably “Oh Papa Blues,” with its memorable closing verse.
Tellingly, the subject of marriage is never tackled with much enthusiasm. Rather than serve as the passive object of their husband’s neglect or abuse, Rainey’s characters aren’t shy about defending themselves and laying down the law. In “Sleep Talking Blues,” for example, Rainey’s character (somewhat humorously) threatens to kill her husband if he ever dares to utter another woman’s name in his sleep.
Rainey’s canon is notable for offering an undisguised look at the issue of spousal abuse. Songs like “Black Eye Blues” may make for uncomfortable listening today due to the tragicomic nature of the lyrics, but simply vocalizing the topic was a radical act. “Women’s blues suggest emergent feminist insurgency in that they unabashedly name the problem of male violence and so usher it out of the shadows of domestic life where society had kept it hidden and beyond public or political scrutiny,” Angela Y. Davis writes.
Rainey’s record sales began to flag by the end of the decade, and jazz-tinged acts like Ethel Waters became the sound of the day, smoothing out the rough edges that were Rainey’s vocal trademark. Now well into her 40s, Rainey felt she was too old to change up her sound. She spent several years performing at small venues and local carnivals, but competition from the “talking pictures” caused her audiences to dwindle. Following the back-to-back deaths of her mother and sister in 1935, Rainey retired from performing all together. But she wasn’t completely through with showbusiness. While some performers blew through their earnings, Rainey had saved wisely. She spent the last years of her life managing several theaters in the town of Rome, Georgia, and she sponsored shows to raise funds for flood victims and others in need. “She had a heart as big as a house,” remembered one friend. She died of a heart attack three days before Christmas in 1939.
While on tour, both Smith and Rainey were frequent visitors to “buffet flats,” or illicit party houses where all manner of sexual expression was accepted and encouraged. Smith immortalized these gatherings in her 1930 song “The Boy in the Boat.”
Rainey’s active social life would eventually cause her some legal problems. While playing a string of Chicago dates in 1925, Rainey hosted a women-only party at her residence, and the rowdy gathering became loud enough to annoy the neighbors. Police arrived, and the revelers scrambled for their clothes and made a beeline for the back door, but Rainey’s getaway was foiled when she took a spill down the stairs. The cops arrested her for throwing an “indecent party” and she spent the night in jail. The next morning, Bessie Smith arrived to bail her out. The incident was hushed up in the press, but fans have since wondered if the eventful night inspired Rainey’s notorious “Prove It on Me Blues.”
Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was a legend in her own lifetime. Just six months after her death, blues guitarist Memphis Minnie recorded the song “Ma Rainey” in her honor. “She was born in Georgia, traveled all over this world,” she sang. “And she was the best blues singer, peoples, I ever heard.” In later years, women like Big Mama Thornton, Dinah Washington and Janis Joplin all cited Rainey as an influence. Bonnie Raitt, another fan, honored Rainey at her Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1990, saying, “The fire and gusto of
Ma’s” singing was exceptional.”
Melissa Etheridge, one of the first musicians to openly identify as a lesbian, also looked to figures like Rainey and Bessie Smith as inspirations. “They were bad women. They were singing in these clubs and they were birthing rock ‘n’ roll,” she said in a 2012 documentary. “I always thought I was so revolutionary coming out [as a lesbian], and then you hear Ma Rainey sing, ‘I went out last night with some of my friends. Must have been women ‘cuz I don’t like no men…’ Come on, this was not popular stuff to be singing about back then, or stuff that they even talked about.”
Bonnie Raitt (Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images)
Melissa Etheridge (Michel Linssen/Redferns/
Getty Images)
Her flamboyance didn’t just extend to her stage attire. With money pouring in from her sold-out concerts across the country, she purchased her troupe a Mack touring bus with her name emblazoned on the side. The interior even boasted a Koehler electric generator for extra luxury. The investment cost an impressive $13,000 — nearly $190,000 in 2020. It proved useful for carrying her four trunks of painted stage backdrops and an elaborate lighting rig. Rainey herself traversed the primitive highway system in a homemade “house trailer,” or a wooden shed built atop an automobile chassis.
Rainey and her songs also inspired artists outside the realm of music. In her novel The Color Purple, author Alice Walker based the character of singer Shug Avery on Ma Rainey and her blues compatriots. In the 1985 film adaptation, she was portrayed by Margaret Avery, who earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the role. Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes’ masterwork “The Blues” included a reference to the singer, and Sterling Brown crafted an ode to her, titled “Ma Rainey.” August Wilson’s Tony-nominated play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, on which the Netflix film is based, was first performed as a staged reading in 1982 before it was brought to Broadway two years later. Theresa Merritt played the title role in the original cast, and Whoopi Goldberg took it over for the 2003 Broadway revival.
