Ma Rainey
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, born Pridgett ( born April 26, 1886 Alabama USA, † December 22, 1939 in Rome, Georgia, United States) was one of the first professional American blues singers and is considered the mother of the blues.
Life
Her parents were artists in minstrel shows. From 1900 she performed even in minstrel and vaudeville shows. In 1902, she heard in a small town in Missouri girl singing a song about abandonment, which she later called " strange and poignant " ( " strange and poignant " ) described. No one in her troupe could tell her what it was for music, but they took the piece in their repertoire and was looking at their next travel more pieces of this kind is generally assumed that they met the earliest form of the blues here this made up from now on, a main focus of their repertoire. Also in 1902, she married William " Pa " Rainey, with whom she performed as a couple and as a vocal duo, they sang blues and pop songs. It was popularized by the show, " Tolliver 's Circus, The Musical Extravaganza and The Rabbit Foot Minstrels " and was friends with the younger Bessie Smith. In 1920, she was the solo star of the TOBA vaudeville tour.
As "Mother of the Blues", she took on 1923-1928 records for Paramount Records; her only top 30 hit she succeeded in January 1925 the " See See Rider Blues", in which she was accompanied by Louis Armstrong, Buster Bailey and Charlie Dixon. She was accompanied both on tour and in the recording of the then new talents of jazz, such as Coleman Hawkins and of Fletcher Henderson. You could do business well so that it operated two theaters of their revenue. She died as a rich woman in 1939 after a heart attack.
Discography (selection)
Swell
- Sandra Lieb Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey. Univ. of Massachusetts Press in 1981. ISBN 0-87023-334-3.
- Angela Davis Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. Pantheon 1998. ISBN 0-679-45005- X.
- Robert Palmer Deep Blues, 1995, ISBN 0-14-006223-8