Ma Rainey, the powerhouse “Mother of the Blues”. A brilliant, outspoken woman who believed in liberation for all, and that the soulful strength of the blues could inspire all those who were tossed aside by mainstream society. Through a career that spanned over thirty years, Rainey stole hearts and raised spirits with her bright, gold-toothed grin and unmatched vocal excellence.
Gertrude Pridgett was born in the mid-1880s. Although the Census of 1900 records that she came into the world in Alabama in September 1882, most researchers — following Rainey’s own account — believe that she was born on April 26, 1886 in Columbus, Ohio.
It was a world in which the enslavement of black Americans had happened within living memory. Growing up as a black woman in the Jim Crow South, Rainey witnessed and was subjected to extreme racism every day. One of the few ways black people were able to experience social mobility and earn a decent living was through musical performance. Rainey’s parents, Thomas and Ella (Allen) Pridgett, had performed in minstrel troupes.
Ma made her public debut at the Springer Opera House in Columbus at around the age of 14, in a local talent show. Little is known about her early life, but Rainey herself claimed to have begun performing on the vaudeville circuit in around 1900 — a brave choice for a young black woman of that age. According to Rainey, it was during this time that she first encountered the genre that she was to call the blues. At a concert hall in Missouri in 1902, she heard a singer perform a sad song about a relationship that had turned sour. Rainey persuaded the woman to teach her the song and from then on, she was to make the plaintive style a key part of her own repertoire.
In February 1904, aged 18, she married William "Pa" Rainey and began performing with him. She adopted the moniker "Ma" to complement his stage name, and the pair were often billed as Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. They performed together for over a decade, touring with countless notable musicians, including the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. When the couple split up in 1916, Rainey began her own touring company: Madame Gertrude Ma Rainey and Her Georgia Smart Set. In 1923, Rainey was discovered by producer J. Mayo Williams and signed to Paramount Records. During her five-year stint with Paramount, she produced 92 records, including "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom", "Bad Luck Blues", and "See, See Rider".
Rainey’s emotional range was as impressive as her vocal span. Her ability to sing lively songs about mischief alongside mournful songs of misfortune set her apart from most other blues singers of her time. She could make people laugh, weep, and laugh again in the course of a three-song set.
"I think her voice made a statement," explains Florene Dawkins, director of the Ma Rainey Museum of the Blues, in an interview with the Guardian. "It was strong. It was unapologetic. They didn’t have all the bells and whistles and the amplifiers we have in music today. It was just music point-blank to your soul."
Despite her talent, Rainey was a controversial figure. Not only was she a black woman determined to make a place for herself in a white man’s world, but she was queer. In 1925, Rainey was arrested by Chicago police after a neighbor filed a noise complaint. When the police arrived, they broke in on a room full of naked women having a lesbian orgy, with Rainey at its center. They caught Rainey while she was attempting to flee and she spent the night in a prison cell. Her young protegée, famed blues singer Bessie Smith, bailed her out the following morning.
Smith had a close relationship with her older mentor. Despite claims that they were rivals, there is nothing to suggest any ill will between them. Not only were they both incredibly talented and revered blues singers, but both were openly bi — a rare thing for women of their time — and there have been speculations that their relationship may have been more than platonic. In any case, Rainey was unafraid to express her bisexuality in her music, and her lyrics contain many allusions to her desire for both men and women.
In the 1928 release "Prove it on Me Blues," she alludes to her attraction to women:
Folks say I’m crooked. I didn’t know where she took it
I want the whole world to know.
I went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
It must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.
Wear my clothes just like a fan,
Talk to the gals just like any old man.
After her contract with Paramount ended in 1935, Rainey retired from performance and became a music impresario in her hometown of Columbus. In her final years, she owned three theaters: The Lyric, The Liberty, and The Airdrome. Rainey died of heart failure in her home in 1939, aged only 53. She had dedicated herself to music until the end.
The home Rainey had occupied fell into disrepair after her death until Florene Dawkins renovated it and, in 2008, with the help of public donations, converted it into the Ma Rainey Museum of the Blues, which houses one of the most significant collections of African American music in the world.
Ma Rainey’s bold and progressive ideas about women’s liberation — and especially her rejection of heteronormative standards — inspired aspects of Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple (1982), one of the most important seminal queer black texts. "Blues singers like Ma Rainey were touchstones, particularly for black women writers," Samuel G. Freedman explains in the New York Times:
Beyond their success as artists and entertainers, the blues women possessed the stuff of great literary characters. They were proud and tragic, indomitable and exploited, and they cast a jaundiced eye at men.
Ma Rainey was unafraid to occupy spaces dominated by whites and to stand up for herself and for the rights she believed black people deserved. In recent years, she has finally started to gain the recognition she deserves — thanks, in part, to the 2020 biopic Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman.
Ma Rainey was a trailblazer both as a female musician and as a bi woman. In both her art and her personal life, she made history.
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