(ThyBlackMan.com) When I think about the roots of blues music—the raw honesty, the pain wrapped in poetry, the joy carved out of hardship—I think of Ma Rainey. Her voice was more than a sound; it was ...

The first few moments of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom are electrifying. It's 1927 in rural Georgia. Hundreds of people, all of them Black, are lined up at the entrance to a huge tent. Inside, Ma Rainey, ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Blues legend Gertrude “Ma” Rainey electrified Jacksonville’s LaVilla district in the early 1900s, building her reputation as the “Mother of the Blues” while breaking barriers as ...

The Goodman Theatre’s current staging of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” starring E. Faye Butler, led to the reissue of a century-old blues album. When “Ma Rainey” burst onto the stage at opening night of ...

Ma Rainey might not be a well-known name, but her influence on music has been huge. During the 1910s and 1920s, Rainey wrote and performed some of the most popular music of the day, earning her the ...