Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was an American blues singer and influential early blues recording artist.
23 Facts About Ma Rainey
2.
Ma Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing.
3.
Ma Rainey's qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues".
4.
Ma Rainey collaborated with Thomas Dorsey, Tampa Red, and Louis Armstrong, and toured and recorded with the Georgia Jazz Band.
5.
Ma Rainey has been posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
6.
Ma Rainey was the second of five children of Thomas and Ella Pridgett, from Alabama.
7.
Ma Rainey had at least two brothers and a sister, Malissa Pridgett Nix.
8.
Ma Rainey took on the stage name "Ma Rainey", which was "a play on her husband's nickname, 'Pa".
9.
Ma Rainey later claimed that she was first exposed to blues music around 1902.
10.
Ma Rainey formed the Alabama Fun Makers Company with her husband, Will Rainey, but in 1906 they both joined Pat Chappelle's much larger and more popular Rabbit's Foot Company, where they were billed together as "Black Face Song and Dance Comedians, Jubilee Singers [and] Cake Walkers".
11.
Ma Rainey said she found "Blues Music" when she was in Missouri one night performing, and a girl introduced her to a sad song about a man leaving a woman.
12.
Ma Rainey said she learned the lyrics of the song and added it to her performances.
13.
Ma Rainey claimed she created the term "blues" when asked what kind of song she was singing.
14.
In 1923, Rainey was discovered by Paramount Records producer J Mayo Williams.
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Ma Rainey made more than 100 other recordings over the next five years, which brought her fame beyond the South.
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Ma Rainey was accompanied by the bandleader and pianist Thomas Dorsey and the band he assembled, the Wildcats Jazz Band.
17.
Ma Rainey's career was not immediately affected; she continued recording for Paramount and earned enough money from touring to buy a bus with her name on it.
18.
In 1935, Ma Rainey returned to her home town, Columbus, Georgia, and became the proprietress of three theaters, the Liberty in Columbus, and the Lyric and the Airdrome in Rome, Georgia, until her death.
19.
Ma Rainey created what is known as "classic blues" while portraying black life like never before.
20.
Ma Rainey helped to pioneer a genre that appealed to North and South, rural and urban audiences.
21.
Ma Rainey was a fashion icon who pioneered flashy, expensive costuming in her performances, wearing ostrich plumes, satin gowns, sequins, gold necklaces, diamond tiaras, and gold teeth.
22.
Ma Rainey was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
23.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a 1982 play by August Wilson, is a fictionalized account of a recording of her song of the same title set in 1927.