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Biography of Ma Rainey
Name: Ma Rainey
Birth Date: April 26, 1886
Death Date: December 22, 1939
Place of Birth: Columbus, Georgia, United States of America
Nationality: American
Gender: Female
Occupations: singer
Ma Rainey
The first popular stage entertainer to incorporate authentic blues in her song repertoire, Ma Rainey (1886-1939) performed during the first three decades of the twentieth century.Known as the "Mother of the Blues," she enjoyed mass popularity during the blues craze of the 1920s. Described by African American poet Sterling Brown in Black Culture and Black Consciousness as "a person of the folk," Rainey recorded in various musical settings and exhibited the influence of genuine rural blues.Ma Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia, on April 26, 1886, to minstrel troupers--Thomas Pridgett, Sr. and Ella Allen-Pridgett. Rainey worked at the Springer Opera House in 1900, performing as a singer and dancer in the local talent show, "A Bunch of Blackberries." On February 2, 1904, Pridgett married comedy songster William "Pa" Rainey. Billed as "Ma" and "Pa" Rainey the couple toured Southern tent shows and cabarets. Though she did not hear blues in Columbus, …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…American womanhood when she wrote the Pulitzer Prize- winning novel, The Color Purple. In Black Pearls, Daphane Harrison praised Rainey as the first great blues stage singer: "The good-humored, rollicking Rainey loved life, loved love, and most of all loved her people. Her voice bursts forth with a hearty declaration of courage and determination--a reaffirmation of black life." Further Reading Barlow, William, Looking Up at Down: The Emergence of Blues Culture, Temple University Press. Cook, Bruce, Listen to the Blues, Da Capo. Harris, Michael W., The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Dorsey in the Urban Church. Harrison, Daphane Duval. Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. Rutgers University Press. Levine, Lawrence W., Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Thought From Slavery to Freedom, Oxford University Press. Oakley, Giles, The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues, Tappinger. Shaw, Arnold, Black Popular Music in America, Schirmer Books.
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