The
Coronavirus pandemic and the closure
of most movie houses for the last 11
months completely disrupted the awards season. One film
that did create buzz and garnered honors was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
based on August Wilson’s 1984 Pulitzer
Prize winning play. Produced by Denzel Washington, Todd
Black, and Dany Wolf, the film stars
Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman who died
during post-production in August
2020, making Black Bottom his, the
film is dedicated to his memory.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom had a limited
theatrical release in November before streaming on Netflix in December. The
film was acclaimed by critics, who lauded the performances of Davis and Boseman. It was named as one
of the Ten Best Films of 2020 by the
American Film Institute; received
nine NAACP Image Award nominations,
including Outstanding Motion Picture;
eight Critics’ Choice Movie Award nominations;
three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations; and Davis and Boseman both
received Golden Globe nominations.
Just
as Wilson’s play had done 37 years earlier, the picture revived interest in the
bigger than life powerhouse who defiantly thumbed her nose not only at White culture and expectations, but at the conventional Black moral code as well.
“Ma” Rainey deserved her recognition as almost the literal Mother of the Blues. Although she did win a narrow White audience in the 1920s,
most of her career that stretched
from late 19th Century tent shows to
the Southern Chitlin circuit of the
1930s was spent recording for and performing to Black audiences. “Ma” Rainey had been retired from recording and touring since
1935 and had taken the money she
earned from decades in show business to
operate two local theaters in her
home town of Columbus, Georgia when
she died suddenly of a heart attack on December 22, 1939. She was believed to be about 53 years
old. Her bold and brassy style of delivering the blues may have already gone
out of style, but she had helped lay
the groundwork for a new era of Black music.
Later in life Rainey would recall that she was born in Columbus on
April 26, 1886. Census records, however, do not
confirm this and indicate that she may have been born in September 1882 in Alabama. Such confusion
over birth dates and even places of
origin were common in Black families at
the time who were often illiterate
and lived lives where events flowed more
like a river than a succession of compartmentalized dates and years. And there were numerous reasons to fudge
birth dates one way or the other.
At any rate Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett, the fistful of a names she
was given, did grow up in Columbus and
had at least two surviving brothers and
a sister, Malissa, whose personal
records were often confounded with
Gerturde’s. She had some rudimentary education, enough to read, write, and cypher and grew up in the First
African Baptist Church where she first performed with the choir.
When she was about 12—assuming the 1886 birth date—she began
performing in Black minstrel shows.
Minstrel shows were a highly stylized form of entertainment,
and the most popular stage shows of
the last half of the 19th Century. The form was invented and developed
by White performers in black face, doing songs, dances, jokes, and sketches either imitative of
Black music or invented out of thin
air.
By the late years of the Century the
form was as popular with Black
audiences as white and Black troupes
started touring. These tent shows—unlike
White troops—Blacks had no access to local theaters or opera houses—then re-interpreted
faux
Black music for their people, often absorbing elements of real folk
culture.
It was an odd and slow process. Young Gertrude Pridgett was not the only performer
learning the ropes in Black Minstrelsy. W. C. Handy, who claimed to have “invented the blues,” toured on the Black Minstrel Circuit and rose to be the band leader in a leading company. So did Jelly
Roll Morton, who would stake his own
claim to being a founder of the blues.
Gertrude would recall that she first
heard the blues around 1902. She quickly
incorporated it into her Minstrel act.
In 1904 she married fellow
minstrel Will Rainey and the two
launched their own act. They were successful enough that they were
able to start their own troupe, the Alabama
Fun Makers Company. Two years later
in 1906 they folded their show into Pat Chappelle’s more successful much
larger Rabbit’s Foot Company. The couple was billed as Rainey and Rainey, “Black Face Song and Dance Comedians, Jubilee Singers, and Cake Walkers”. Those referred to traditional minstrel forms and indicate
that as yet the blues were only a minor
part of their act.
But it kept getting bigger. By 1910 Mrs. Rainey was being advertised independently of her husband
as “Mrs. Gertrude Rainey, our coon
shouter,” a strong indication that most of her material was now Blues. Management of the company changed hands in
1912 when Chappelle, a Black showman, died.
White entrepreneur F. S. Wolcott
took over the show. He had the money to
expand it—often sending out two companies
of more than 50 performers each including a 10 piece band under circus-like big tops.
By 1914 Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues were headlining the show. That year in New Orleans Rainey first met Joe
“King” Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Pops Foster who were incorporating blues forms into the creole sounds of traditional street brass bands and inventing jazz. In turn their experimentations influenced the Raineys.
About the same time Rainey
encountered a young, aspiring blues shouter, Bessie Smith. Legend has it that Rainey kidnaped the rising star and held her captive to sing in the Rabbit’s Foot
Company. Although it is true that Rainey
mentored the younger singer during
her two year stay with the show, there is no indication that Smith was held against her will.
The blues was beginning to catch on around the World War I era when some White artists
were adapting it for vaudeville acts and making some recordings. It wasn’t until 1920, however, that sides were issued by veteran Black vaudevillian Mamie Smith
who scored a million copy seller
with Crazy
Blues. It was considered the first commercial vocal recording of the
blues by a Black artist. That got the
attention of other labels and there
was a scramble to sign similar
artists. In 1923 Rainey’s former protégée
Bessie Smith began her recording career for Columbia Records.
In December 1923, two months after
Bessie Smith’s first release, Rainey laid down her first tracks for J. Mayo Williams
in Chicago for Paramount Records. Among the
eight songs recorded in that first session were Bad Luck Blues, Bo-Weevil
Blues, and Moonshine Blues each were hits, released under the name “Ma” Rainey, a bow to her senior
status among female blues shouters.
The label snatched her up to a long
term contract and began to market her heavily as the Mother of the Blues, the Songbird
of the South, Gold-Neck Woman of the
Blues and the Paramount
Wildcat. Over the next five years
the label would release over 100 Ma Rainey records and discovered that not only
did she sell in the expected race
records markets of the South, but in some northern cites to white audiences.
| Ma Rainey's Paramount recordings were raw, frank, down, and dirty just the way her audience like it. |
I despite her success with
Paramount, it was in some ways an unfortunate
match for her. Unlike competitors in
race records including Okeh, Blue Bird, and RCA Victor subsidiaries, the quality of Paramount’s recordings were inferior and muddied due to their production
process and inferior shellac used
on the discs. So although scores of
Rainey’s performances were recorded, they never adequately captured her full
power.
In 1924 Rainey made some records
with her old friend Louis Armstrong who in those days frequently teamed up with other artists in a variety of genres. Together they made Jelly
Bean Blues, Countin’ the Blues and See See Rider, the latter
a seminal song in blues history that
has been enshrined in the Grammy Hall of
Fame, and was included by the National
Recording Preservation Board in the Library
of Congress National Recording Registry.
The song’s origins date back to the
first decade of the 20th Century and
are about a semi-legendary bluesman named
See See Rider, a former slave who
sawed a homemade, single string fiddle.
After the Rainey/Armstrong version more than 100 recordings have
been made, several classics of urban blues, rhythm & blues, and rock
& roll later often under the title C.C. Rider.
Another highly influential song was Ma
Rainey’s Black Bottom, her version of the ‘20’s dance craze based on earlier Rounder dances—referring to pimps
and whores. Rainey’s version virtually crackled with sexual tension and innuendo
compared to the sanitized version
staged by George White on Broadway in his Scandals. Playwright August Wilson built his play around a fictionalized version of the recording session.
With the success of her records,
Rainey was now a star in her own right. She launched her own touring company under
the auspices of the Theater Owners Booking
Association (TOBA). She covered a circuit in the South and Midwestern
United States. It was an illustrious company. Her first band leader was pianist Thomas Dorsey and his band was known as the Wild Cat Jazz Band. Their first tour began in Chicago where they played before integrated audiences as they would in northern sections of the tour. In the South, they played Black theaters, and
occasionally in tents like in the old days.
Dorsey left the company temporarily
in 1926 due to ill health and was
replaced on piano by Lillian Hardaway
Henderson whose husband was the combo’s
cornetist, Fletcher Henderson. Fletcher took over Dorsey’s duties as band
leader, his first outing in that role.
Dorsey would re-unite with Rainey in 1928 for a series of Paramount
recordings before they went their separate ways. Dorsey was billed as Georgia Tom Dorsey and Tampa Red played guitar on the sessions.
Dorsey went on to virtually invent modern Black Gospel
music as a composer, arranger,
conductor, impresario, and music
publisher.
By 1928 Rainey was successful enough
to purchase her own touring coach with
her name emblazoned on the side, a symbol of a hugely successful touring act.
By this time Rainey sometimes
appeared in a suit and tie rather than a dress sparking rumors of lesbianism
which she addressed in songs like Prove It on Me in which she
sang:
They said I do it, ain’t nobody caught me.
Sure got to prove it on me.
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends.
They must’ve been women,
‘cause I don’t like no men
… It’s true I wear a collar and a tie
... Talk to the gals just like any old man.
Modern feminist and gay cultural
historians call the song an early
preview of the anthems of the
‘70’s.
Although Rainey’s records continued
to sell well, Paramount did not renew her
contract when it expired. Whether potential scandal about her sexuality
played a part, or if the company was anticipating
changes in the public’s taste
has long been debated.
For her part Rainey never pursued a new recording contract, preferring
to concentrate on her tours, which she continued until 1935 when her increasing weight made the strain too much.
Her raw barrel house style had
gone out of style replaced by a big band
vocalist style on one hand represented by younger singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and the primitive, guitar based Delta blues of Memphis
Minnie and Robert Johnson on the
other. That’s when she headed home to Columbus.
She died in her hometown on December 22, 1939.
Rainey was nearly forgotten by all but hard
core blues fans until Wilson’s play revived interest in her career. The next year, 1983, she was elected to the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. In 1990 she was inducted as a roots influence into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was honored by a Postal Service commemorative stamp in 1994.
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