Gertrude Pridgett "Ma" Rainey, known as the "Mother of the Blues", was the first popular stage entertainer to incorporate authentic blues into her song repertoire. Even before the recording industry took off in the 1920s and the blues became a nationwide craze, she had developed a national reputation for her energizing, straight-talking performances and full-throated vocals. Known as Ma Rainey, she was born on April 26, 1886, the second of five children, in Columbus, Georgia. There is uncertainty about the birth date, some sources indicate that she was born in 1882, while most sources assert that she was born in 1886. Her grandmother and both her parents were minstrel performers. She showed musical talent early on, beginning her career at age fourteen in a local talent show, “Bunch of Blackberries,” at the Springer Opera House in Columbus. She soon traveled and performed in tent shows, honky-tonks, carnivals and with vaudeville acts.
It was while on the road, in Missouri in 1902, that she first heard a country blues singer. A young woman came up to the troupe’s tent with a guitar, singing a song of heartbreak with a twisting, ghostly melody. Rainey found herself so struck by the tune’s mysterious pathos that she began singing the song as an encore at her own shows. Traveling throughout the rural South, Rainey began to hear similar songs, and she worked more country blues into her repertoire. This embryonic stage had evolved from field hollers, religious spirituals, chain-gang chants, and work songs from the last decade of the previous century. The blues style was such a natural fit for her that at one point she said she had invented the term “blues,” although most historians consider that claim to be an exaggeration. Rainey seamlessly transitioned from traditional vaudeville act to blues singer. Her voice had a rare power, pride, and energy that enraptured audiences.
She was eighteen years old when she became known as "Ma" Rainey after her marriage to comedian, dancer and vocalist Will "Pa" Rainey in 1904. She formed the Alabama Fun Makers Company with her husband, in 1906. Billed as "Ma" and "Pa" Rainey they both joined Pat Chappelle's much larger and more popular "The Rabbit Foot Minstrels" where they were billed together as "Black Face Song and Dance Comedians, Jubilee Singers and Cake Walkers". In 1910, she was described as "Mrs. Gertrude Rainey, our coon shouter". She continued with the Rabbit's Foot Company after it was taken over by a new owner, F. S. Wolcott, in 1912, followed a little bit later by the job with Moses Stokes. Traditional vaudeville during this period featured comedic pantomime along with dancing and singing.
In 1912 the young Bessie Smith joined her troupe in Chattanooga, TN. While Rainey’s influence on Smith’s style has been exaggerated, her uniquely penetrating voice did help shape the young singer’s development, something clearly audible in Smith’s early recordings. Not only were they both virtuoso singers, they shared a love of bold, risqué lyrics. The two women became close in ways that aroused suspicion. Neither seemed to care. They had the blues, each other, and soon America’s attention. During one tour, after Rainey was caught by the Chicago police in the midst of a sexual dalliance with some of her female dancers, it was Smith who came to bail her out of jail. Though they sang together for only a short time, they were two of the most important figures in the development of what later came to be called classical blues, a musical style widely popularized by Bessie Smith, who came to be known as the “Empress of the Blues.”
Ma and Pa Rainey later formed their own group, "Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues", and toured throughout the south, performing with several minstrel shows. They then traveled with Tolliver's Circus and Musical Extravaganza. As the popularity of blues music increased, she became well known. Separated from her husband in 1916, Rainey subsequently toured with her own band, Madam Gertrude Ma Rainey and Her Georgia Smart Sets, featuring a chorus line and a Cotton Blossoms Show, and Donald McGregor's Carnival Show. Rainey often closed her set with “See See Rider,” a lament for a lover whose primary romantic partner comes back into the picture. “I’m goin’ away, baby, won’t be back till fall/Lawd, lawd, lawd,” she sings on the recorded version. “Goin’ away, baby, won’t be back till fall./If I find me a good man, I won’t be back at all.” Like many tent shows, Rainey’s often holed up for the winter in New Orleans. In the off-season she became friends with a number of the city’s leading jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, and King Oliver.
In December 1923 Rainey began a five-year association with Paramount Records. By this time Ma Rainey was already a music industry veteran. Her time on the road meant that when she went into the recording studio, it was with a no-nonsense professionalism. She became one of the first women to record the blues professionally, eventually producing more than 100 recordings of her own compositions with some of the finest musicians of the day. Between 1923 and 1928, with “race records” by and for the Black community, these recordings were becoming a thriving industry. In the beginning, the label’s goal was to produce music as cheaply as possible, resulting in records with poor production and sound. Due to Paramount’s below-average recording techniques and shellac quality, Rainey’s recordings were heavily-grainy and muffled. The deficiencies in her sound may have taken a toll on her popularity and mainstream notoriety.
In those five years, she made over 100 recordings, including "Bo-Weevil Blues" (1923), "Moonshine Blues" (1923), "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (1927), and "Soon This Morning" (1927). Louis Armstrong accompanied her in "Jelly Bean Blues" (1924), and later her Georgia Jazz Band included at different times Tommy Ladnier, Joe Smith, and Coleman Hawkins. In August 1924, Rainey recorded the eight-bar blues number "Shave 'Em Dry," which became a classic. Riding the breakout success of these recordings, she and her accompanist, Thomas A. Dorsey assembled a touring band that could play both homespun blues and written sheet music. Her songs and vocal style reveal her deep connection with the pain of jealousy, poverty, sexual abuse, and loneliness of sharecroppers and southern Blacks. She recorded almost 100 songs in five years, including the jazzy “Bo-Weavil Blues” and “See See Rider,” a tune about an unfaithful lover.
Ma didn’t allow Paramount to dictate her sound – she stayed true to herself, fully commanding the genre and its attributes despite what the label may have wanted. She lived for much of the 1920s and ’30s in Chicago, performing in concert and at house parties with jazz musicians like Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, and touring the country often. By this point, though, live recordings were increasingly on their way out in favor of pre-made recordings. By 1928, her Vaudevillian style was no longer considered en vogue by Paramount, and her contract was terminated. Rainey returned to the live performance circuit in the early 1930s, but the economic impact of The Great Depression was devastating. It took a toll on Smith’s record sales, and her career slumped as a result. The other development was cultural: More urban-oriented vocalists like Ethel Waters, who sang in a sophisticated jazz style as appropriate to a concert hall as a nightclub, began to supplant the style of blues that was Rainey’s bread and butter. Traditional blues style began to seem old-fashioned as the 30s dawned.
In 1935, Rainey returned to her home town, Columbus, Georgia and effectively retired, though she worked for a few years as a theater proprietor, until her death on December 22, 1939. She was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing. In her lyrics, Rainey portrayed the Black female experience like few others of the time reflecting a wide range of emotions and experiences. Draped in long gowns and covered in diamonds and a necklace of gold pieces, Rainey had a powerful command over her audiences. Her deep contralto voice, sometimes verging on harshness, was a powerful instrument with which to convey the depth of her songs of everyday life and emotion, and she was renowned for her flamboyant performances.
Until her death in 1939, she poured her heart into managing three theaters in the city she claimed was her birthplace: Columbus, Georgia. Ma Rainey produced some of the greatest examples of blues music during the Harlem Renaissance period. She sang of the "woes and triumphs" of African Americans, reflecting the Harlem Renaissance's focus on defining the Black community experience. Inspired by Rainey’s music, poet Langston Hughes brought aspects of Black-led musical genres into his work. She helped to pioneer a genre that appealed to North and South, rural and urban audiences. Her signature low and gravelly voice sung with Rainey's gusto and authoritative style inspired imitators from Louis Armstrong, Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt among others. She helped to pioneer a genre that appealed to North and South, rural and urban audiences. Rainey was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983. In her lyrics, Rainey portrayed the Black female experience like few others of the time reflecting a wide range of emotions and experiences. Gertrude Pridgett “Ma” Rainey's contributions to blues music not only enriched the genre but also provided a voice for the struggles and experiences of her community.