Background
Gertrude Pridgett was born on April 26, 1886 in Columbus, Georgia, the daughter of Thomas and Ella Pridgett. Little is known of her life.
https://www.amazon.com/Ma-Rainey/dp/B000UBMZV6?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000UBMZV6
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Gertrude-Rainey-Mother-Blues/dp/B00065U03G?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00065U03G
(MA RAINEY - ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS (RM) - 2 CD SET)
MA RAINEY - ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS (RM) - 2 CD SET
https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Recordings-RAINEY-MA/dp/B01ESG4YYO?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B01ESG4YYO
(The classic blues belter had been singing for two decades...)
The classic blues belter had been singing for two decades before she ever put her voice on record, and it shows on these recordings from the mid- to late '20s. The archetypal blues shouter, Rainey had a voice whose depth and strength is startling and sometimes alarming, even on these scratchy old recordings--one can only imagine what she must have sounded like in real life. Her backup musicians include such notables as pianist Fletcher Henderson, trombonist Charlie Green, guitarist Tampa Red, and trombonist Kid Ory, all performing fairly straightforward 12-bar blues. It's not the material here that's notable, so much as Rainey's voice, a voice that has informed the work of female blues singers ever since. --Genevieve Williams
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Bottom-MA-RAINEY/dp/B000000G86?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000000G86
https://www.amazon.com/Ma-Raineys-Black-Bottom-Rainey/dp/B00HVVRE3M?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00HVVRE3M
(Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Les...)
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites. Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage, of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation.
https://www.amazon.com/Ma-Raineys-Black-Bottom-Play/dp/0452261139?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0452261139
Gertrude Pridgett was born on April 26, 1886 in Columbus, Georgia, the daughter of Thomas and Ella Pridgett. Little is known of her life.
As a youngster she began her career at the Springer Opera House in Columbus, where she sang with a group called "the Bunch of Blackberries. " For most of the next two decades she toured the South with his Rabbit Foot Minstrels on the Negro T. O. B. A. (Theatre Owners and Bookers Association) vaudeville circuit, appearing in honky tonks, carnivals, and tent shows.
In 1923 she began a series of phonograph recordings that brought her her greatest fame. With her earnings before the depression she purchased two theatres in Rome, Georgia, and bought a home there, where she lived after her retirement from music in 1933. She died in Rome at the age of fifty-three.
It was on Paramount records that "Ma" Rainey scored her great success in 1923. On her records, and in person, she sang only for Negro audiences. Not until after her death, when a growing popular interest in jazz and its origins led to a rediscovery of many of the earlier "race recordings, " did "Ma" Rainey win recognition among students of jazz as one of its important figures - the first and, to some critics, the greatest of the blues singers. She is the subject of an excellent poem by Prof. Sterling Brown of Howard University. "Ma" Rainey sang what has come to be known as "country" blues, an archaic style practically indistinguishable from folk music, since the black people of the South took over the music on her recordings as their own and handed it down by word of mouth. She was a transitional figure in the sense that many of her recordings show the influence of the earlier rags, minstrel songs, and the popular music of the early twentieth century, although she sang everything in an outstandingly "blue" style.
(The classic blues belter had been singing for two decades...)
(Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Les...)
(MA RAINEY - ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS (RM) - 2 CD SET)
book
book
Quotations:
"They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. 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. "
"If you don't like my ocean don't fish in my sea
Stay out of my valley and let my mountain be. "
"I can't tell my future, so I'm going to tell my past. "
"My audience wants to see me beautifully gowned, and I have spared no expense or pains. .. For I feel that the best is none too good for the public that pays to hear a singer. "
She was a short, tubby woman.
She made no use of the throbbing vibrato which became popular later and little use of prolonged glissandos or slurred blue notes. Her low contralto voice had a deceptively simple and folk-like directness, a freedom from contrivance, and a feeling of easy mastery.
She married William ("Pa") Rainey around 1900.
