FEATURE:
The Lockdown Playlist
IN THIS PHOTO: Ma Rainey
A Ma Rainey-Inspired Blues-Fest
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ALTHOUGH the tone is not too Christmas-like….
IN THIS PHOTO: A promotional image from the play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
I wanted to put out a Lockdown Playlist inspired by Ma Rainey. She is the subject of a new Netflix drama, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (a film adaptation of August Wilson’s play starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman). She has been called the ‘Mother of the Blues’, and she has inspired a lot of other artists. The Guardian have provided more details about Ma Rainey:
“Rainey – pioneering as a blues singer, businesswoman and liberated bisexual – grew up in the Jim Crow south in the late 19th century. By her own account, she was born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus on 26 April 1886, although other records suggest she was born in Alabama in September 1882.
She married singer, dancer and comedian William Rainey when she was 18 and, billed as Ma and Pa Rainey, they toured as performers for minstrel shows that travelled towns setting up their own tents and stages. After the couple separated in 1916, Rainey launched her own touring performance company, Madam Gertrude Ma Rainey and Her Georgia Smart Set.
She joined a wave of African Americans who quit the south to pursue dreams in desegregated northern cities such as Chicago. She signed with Paramount, a furniture company in Wisconsin that had got into the recording business, and became one of the first recorded blues musicians. Between 1923 and 1928 she made nearly a hundred records – one such recording session forms the basis of Wilson’s play – and had numerous hits.
Rainey, who wrote her own songs, was a mentor to singer Bessie Smith and worked with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Thomas Dorsey, who was musical director on some of her recordings. Her full-throated vocals have inspired singers from Dinah Washington to Janis Joplin”.
In honour of the pioneering Ma Rainey and her incredible life, this Lockdown Playlist includes a couple of her best tracks, but it also features other great Blues/Blues-Rock tracks. I will make the next Lockdown Playlist a bit cheerier but, to salute a Blues great, here are some great songs from…
AN underrated and underplayed genre.