Ma Rainey’s Original Black Bottom - a podcast by Ace of Spades PDX

A brief overview and spotlight on the real Blues musician who's name adorns an upcoming film on Netflix that features Academy Award winner Viola Davis and the last filmed performance of Chadwick Boseman. #marainey #blues #bluesmusic







More than 75 percent of all correspondence to me is concerning an artist or recorded audio that someone has heard about in visual media. This week, Netflix will debut a filmed version of August Wilson's 1982 Pulitzer Prize winning play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.







Yes, I get that people could easily just look these things up on the internet. Nonetheless, it brings me nothing but pride that someone thought I might have some kind of answer for them, especially considering the format I use to present audio to the programs fans, which joins together an overview instead of just individual clips that one has to wade through.







Ma Rainey in 1917. Photographer unknown. Public Domain.







To the best of anyone's research, all of which owes a great deal to Sandra R. Leib's highly detailed work in the book Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey (1983, University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-334-3), Rainey was possibly only the second Black woman ever recorded. She cut 94 songs, many of them in the Blues genre, but others that also would be considered Pop or novelty records, all of which were popular during the Jazz age of the 1920's. She also wrote a great deal of her own lyrics, and is considered one of the first true "Blues" artists. According to legend, it was also Rainey that coined the term "Blues" to describe her music.







She recorded for the Paramount label, based out of Wisconsin. She was at least 36 years of age, which is almost unheard of for a new artist then or now. Paramount would record some of the most influential and early Blues music in history, which also included Blind Lemon Jefferson, Louis Armstrong and Thomas Dorsey, the latter one of the most prolific writers and performers of secular music and religious songs in history. (Their entire catalogue has been re-issued in two massive volumes several years ago by Third Man Records, owned by Jack White.)







Ma Rainey's Georgia Jazz Band pose for a studio group shot c 1924 with 'Gabriel', Albert Wynn, Dave Nelson, Ma Rainey, Ed Pollack and Thomas A Dorsey. Estate Of Keith Morris. Credit: Redferns.







Born Gertrude Pridgett in 1886 in either Alabama or Georgia (census records and personal accounts are conflicting), she was married in 1904 to Will "Pa" Rainey. She toured the chitlin' circuit (a series of black-owned venues in the South and the East Coast) relentlessly, first in minstrel shows (a type of vaudeville-like entertainment that depicted Black people in usually degrading and racist settings, often in song, dance and comedy skits) for years, honing her craft. In 1923, she recorded her first sides for Paramount in Chicago, which also happens to be the setting of the play and film.







After the success of Mamie Smith on Okeh Records out of New York City in 1920, music labels, still a fairly new business enterprise, were keen to record Black musicians, which were popular among the white record buying public. Her first recordings weren't originally led by men, but by Lovie Austin, a Black female bandleader out of Chicago and considered one of the finest players of Blues piano of the era.







78 RPM 10" single label for Black Bottom by Ma Rainey, 1927. Courtesy of Third Man Records.







Rainey would become a popular recording and touring figure; however,

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