“Her sexual braggadocio, popular in men’s blues songs, helped to create her legend as both fearless and sexually independent,” Mack says. A few years later, she would release “Prove It On Me Blues,” considered one of the earliest odes to lesbianism on record: “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,” she sang. No, ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ is no longer based totally on a real story. While this contrast may have rung true in the late ‘20s, it was Rainey who was pioneering a new sound just a few years earlier. She was inducted into both the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, and honored with a U.S. In the new film, Rainey’s style of blues is portrayed as archaic compared to the faster hot jazz preferred by her young band member Levee (Chadwick Boseman). Is McGee Really Leaving 'NCIS' This Year? the year Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is set in — Ma was in her forties and had already made recordings with various musicians under the name Ma Rainey and Her Georgia Jazz Band, including music giants such as Willie "The Lion" Smith and Louis Armstrong. “When she started singing, the gold in her teeth would sparkle,” Rainey’s longtime musical director Thomas A. Dorsey wrote in his unpublished memoirs. Kayla Keegan covers all things in the entertainment, pop culture, and celebrity space for Good Housekeeping. The movie traces the journey of this amazing woman who became one of the most popular singers of all time. After this, The Guardian reports that Paramount ended up canceling her recording contract "because her style of blues was no longer deemed fashionable.". Anthony Mackie is unable to watch his late friend Chadwick Boseman in Netflix’s critically acclaimed “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” because it would be too emotional an experience for him. Executives coerced blues singers—especially those who had no experience in the recording industry—to sign away future royalties or even ownership of their songs, leaving many artists destitute after the peak of their popularity. The "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers. Is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Based on a True Story? * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is actually one of several works included in August's American Century Cycle collection. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is among the leading contenders in several categories for this year’s Academy Awards. In 1935, she pivoted to another kind of leadership when she bought two movie halls: the Lyric and Airdome theaters, in Columbus Ga. She managed them until her death four years later. Angela Davis, in her 2011 book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, wrote that Rainey’s songs are full of women who “explicitly celebrate their right to conduct themselves as expansively and even as undesirably as men.” They wield pistols, carouse until the morning, dodge the police, and sleep around for revenge. The legendary singer was born Gertrude Pridgett on April 26, 1886. In 1923, Ma became one of the first Black artists signed to Paramount, and she made her first of roughly 100 recordings. The George C. Wolfe-helmed film takes plenty of liberties with the August Wilson play it's based on, which in and of itself took creative license with the blues musician's life. Ma Rainey influenced future legends like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, but it was her own struggle to remain true to herself as a Black artist during the early 20 th century that became the inspiration for Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson’s play, the first of his works to be performed on Broadway The New York Times reports that the duo eventually became known as "Ma and Pa Rainey, the Assassinators of the Blues." On December 18, Netflix released the new film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a drama adapted from a play of the same name, written by late Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson. While Ma did live in Chicago in 1927, had relationships with women, and traveled with a band, all of the characters in the play — Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige), Butler (Colman Domingo), Slow Drag (Michael Potts), Toledo (Glynn Turman), Sylvester (Dusan Brown), Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne), and Levee (Chadwick Boseman) — are fictional. All the characters in the story are struggling in one way or another — even the famous Ma Rainey — and the story suggests that interpersonal conflict is a symptom of greater social issues. She and her band could make a sizable $350 a week on tour with the Theater Owners’ Booking Association (for comparison, George Williams and Bessie Brown could make $175, while superstar Bessie Smith raked in $600). Soon after, in 1904, Ma married her husband, William "Pa" Rainey. Read Tiger Woods's Agent's Reaction to New HBO Doc, Here's What We Know About 'Bling Empire' Season 2, Ken Jennings Got Majorly Trolled on 'Jeopardy! You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io, The Sad Backstory Behind Disney+'s 'WandaVision'. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. It was common practice for Williams to buy songs outright from artists for $5 to $20, keep the royalties for himself, and sit back and earn a steady living off them while the artists themselves struggled. Suits were far from the only fashion statement that Rainey made during her performing career. While the protagonist is based totally on the very actual African-American blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the script itself used to be no longer stimulated through proper events. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom follows the story of real Chicago blues musician, Ma Rainey, but how much of her portrayal in Ruben Santiago-Hudson's adaptation remains accurate to the true story? ", How to Best Alleviate COVID-19 Symptoms at Home, These Reusable Grocery Bags Make Shopping a Breeze, How to Read the 'Bridgerton' Books in Order. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our. In it, Viola Davis plays Rainey with both regal composure and pitch-black fury over the course of a sweltering afternoon recording session in 1927, as she fights for respect and artistic autonomy. Ma Rainey and her band the Rabbit Foot Minstrels circa 1924 in Chicago, Illinois. Rainey was born in the 1880s in Columbus, Ga.; she performed on the vaudeville circuit for many years across the South, inheriting some performative traditions from minstrelsy and honing her outsize stage presence and comic timing. That said, there are some real historical elements highlighted in the play. Image Source: Netflix While Ma Rainey was very much a real blues trailblazer with an unforgettable persona, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom isn't actually based on a true story… The stage name “Ma Rainey” would come in the aftermath of her 1904 marriage to Will Rainey, a comedian and singer. “Have you ever been drunk, slept in all your clothes? And this type of subterfuge was common at Rainey’s label Paramount, despite the fact that it was largely operated by a Black producer, J. Mayo Williams. However, it’s based on the 2008 Booker Prize-winning fiction novel of the same name by Aravind Adiga. During the Black Arts Movement of the '60s, poet Al Young famously wrote "A Dance for Ma Rainey," to honor her artistry. The stories highlighted in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom are also based on the real experiences of Black Americans in the early 20th century. ', Kevin Costner Shared A New Photo For His Birthday, Watch Steve Harvey Completely Lose It on 'Feud'. Please try again later. While very few public performers were fully out of the closet, Rainey didn’t try very hard to hide her bisexuality. Onstage, she wore satin gowns and diamond tiaras; a necklace of gold coins often hung from her neck. And it would likewise inspire imitators for generations to come. Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. Around the same time, Sandra R. Lieb published a book about Ma's life titled Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey. So, yes, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is based on a true story, in that Ma Rainey was a real person, but most of the actual plot is fictional. Each product we feature has been independently selected and reviewed by our editorial team. Ma Rainey Is Best Known as a Pioneer of the Blues. All of the events that unfold in the Netflix movie — which shows a day in the life of Ma Rainey and her band — did not actually happen quite as depicted. Though, per The Guardian, records suggest Ma was born in Alabama in September of 1882, the singer herself often said she was born on April 26, 1886 in Columbus, Georgia. Born Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett in either Alabama or Georgia, in 1882 or 1886, Ma Rainey would become the "Mother of Blues" in her lifetime. The White Tiger Is a Complex Crime Drama with a Dazzling Performance at Its Center, Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Approval the Most Globally Important, Save on the cover price and get Free Issues, Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know now on politics, health and more, © 2021 TIME USA, LLC. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is set in 1920s Chicago, and predominantly deals with themes of Black art and culture, racial tensions, and power dynamics. And he allows us to talk.". But while Rainey earned a good amount of money, it wasn’t nearly the amount that she deserved. Rainey’s duality made her a hit before Southern audiences as well as in Chicago where she recorded—and set a template for future waves of high-low Black musical innovation. While other blues singers of the day, like Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, largely sang songs written by others, Rainey penned at least one third of the songs she recorded. Williams was known to be just as cutthroat as his white counterparts: he would later say that he subscribed to the industry maxim “screw the artist before he screws you,” and that nine out of 10 Paramount artists received no royalties regardless of their record sales. All Rights Reserved. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was, without any exaggeration, an icon. So, the main question - is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a true story? Is The White Tiger based on a true story? This is the true story of the life of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues,” and the subject of the Netflix film starring Oscar-winner Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. But while Rainey leaned into onstage maximalism, she was also mesmerized by the blues guitarists she saw on the road who took a more spartan, improvisatory and emotionally raw approach to their music. During this time, she brought massive blues hits like "Moonshine Blues," "See See Rider," and "Trust No Man" to the mainstream. Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (born Gertrude Pridgett, 1882 or 1886 – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest African-American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. Rainey had a perfect voice for her new brand of music: low and gravelly, filled with both raw pathos and brassy authority. In 1904, she married comedian, dancer, and singer Will Rainey; together they toured the South with a variety of minstrel groups, billing themselves as Ma and Pa Rainey. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Netflix ends—as many films based on a true story tend to—with a photo montage of the real-life characters depicted on screen. And when you wake up, feel like you want a dose?” Rainey asks in “Dead Drunk Blues.”, “She transgressed these ideas of white middle class female respectability,” Kimberly Mack, an assistant literature professor at the University of Toledo and the author of Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White, said in an interview. But She Broke More Than Musical Barriers Ma Rainey and her band the Rabbit Foot Minstrels circa 1924 in Chicago, Illinois. Yes, I said almost. In an article for The New York Times before his death in 2005, the legendary dramatist wrote: To honor August, Denzel made it known that he intends to bring all 10 of the American Century Cycle plays to the big screen in the years to come. During the '80s and '90s, Ma's contributions to music continued to be recognized. Though, per The Guardian, records suggest Ma was born in … This content is imported from {embed-name}. This approach captured the imagination of many Black Americans at a transformative moment in which, thanks to the Great Migration, the longstanding divides between North and South, rural and urban, antique and modern were becoming eroded or blurred. Why trust us? Though her music temporarily fell out of print when the Great Depression hit and Paramount closed down, her catalog was revived in the 1960s when the songs were picked up by Milestone and Biograph labels, per the New York Times. Rainey sang about “sissy men” and mannish women, seemingly without judgment; onstage, she performed with “uninhibited, provocative movements,” according to Sandra Lieb, author of Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey. We Need Monthly Stimulus Checks Until the Pandemic Is Over. Rainey didn’t just popularize the genre of classic blues: she helped write it. Her legacy as an LGBTQ pioneer also continues to be celebrated. In an era dominated by white Tin Pan Alley composers, Rainey imbued her songs with the depth and diversity of her own experiences as well those of other Black women, portraying anguish, rage, euphoria, love, sexual desire and much more. The exploitation of Black artists was widely prominent at the time of Ma's popularity. “Through storytelling in both the words that she sang and also her lifestyle, she fought against heteronormative ideas of what a woman should be.”, In a 1984 interview with the New York Times, Alice Walker says that the songwriting of Rainey and other blues singers was pivotal in helping to form the characters in The Color Purple. But despite its real-life protagonist, the film’s plot is actually a work of fiction. “I loved the way they dealt with sexuality, with the relationships with men,” she says. The real Rainey would be out of a job just a year later: classic blues was fading in popularity in favor of swing jazz, and the advent of talking pictures had dented the centrality of live performances. But Rainey’s impact on music, fashion and myth-making still lingers. To depict the Black experience throughout the 20th century, August penned a play for each decade — Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was set in the 1920s, The Piano Lesson was in the '30s, and Fences (both Denzel and Viola starred in the 2016 film version of the play) was in the '50s. In 1925, she was arrested for throwing an “indecent” and “intimate” party with a group of young women, forcing Bessie Smith—a possible lover of hers—to bail her out. Makes the wind blow all the while.” A cartoon ad for the song released by her record label Paramount embraces this genderbending: She wears a men’s three piece suit and fedora and mingles with two women on a corner, while a policeman watches suspiciously in the shadows. Thanks to her showmanship, songwriting and powerful voice, Rainey earned a reputation as one of the most dynamic performers in America in the 1920s, and her tour earnings reflected that popularity. Although Viola worried she wouldn't be able to sing well enough to play the iconic "Mother of Blues," after reading the script she knew she had to get involved. You can unsubscribe at any time. In this week’s Sunday Spotlight, NBC’s Rehema Ellis shares the real-life story and music behind the movie, which stars Viola Davis as an early pioneer of the blues. This is what you need to know about the real Ma Rainey before (or after) watching. Watching Viola depict Ma, it's clear the Oscar-winning actress did a lot of preparation to portray the powerful, bawdy, and charismatic singer. The gritty-voiced Joplin was open about how Rainey was one of her biggest influences, and so was Bonnie Raitt: during Rainey’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction in 1990, she said that “the fire and gusto of Ma’s singing was exceptional.”. Inspired by the performer, she allegedly started singing the same song as an encore at her own shows. Per Robert Springer's "Folklore, Commercialism and Exploitation: Copyright in the Blues" and History.com, it was common practice for white-owned record labels to get Black artists to sign away their recording rights (and then have white artists release covers of their songs), underpay Black artists, and make it difficult for Black artists to receive the royalties they earned. Ma Rainey influenced future legends like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, but it was her own struggle to remain true to herself as a Black artist … For instance, the song Ma is seen recording with her band, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," was an actual number written in response to the 1920s dance craze known as the black bottom, which originated in the Southern Black community (and was reportedly named after a predominantly Black neighborhood in Detroit). It doesn't get any better than that. But She Broke More Than Musical Barriers. In the 1980s, Ma was front and center in pop culture once again thanks to the Broadway staging of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, starring Theresa Merritt as the acclaimed singer (in the 2003 revival, Whoopi Goldberg portrayed Ma). “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the Netflix adaptation of August Wilson’s play, takes place in a Chicago recording studio in 1927. I'm really excited about that," he told The Hollywood Reporter. She was with her first husband, Will Rainey, for at least 10 years before separating, according … That style is now known as “classic blues”—but at the time, it was a unique and radical hybrid of several American forms, and Rainey was pivotal in creating and popularizing it. It’s not hard to draw a line between that impulse and dominant themes running through hip-hop today. But Ma Rainey also follows the virtuoso trumpet player Levee (Chadwick Boseman) as he clashes with Ma and her producer, Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne). Her ability to negotiate sizable contracts, combined with her generosity, made her a beloved bandleader among musicians. Sadly, just years after her retirement began, Ma died of a heart attack on December 22, 1939. The subject of Oscar-tipped Netflix drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was a pioneering queer black singer who battled white producers for control Last modified on … When looking at the new Netflix drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, one may come to the conclusion that the film is based on a true story.After all, the movie’s lead character — blues singer Ma Rainey — was a real person. With the Black Bottom story, viewers can get some interesting details about her life and her rise to fame. Many of those, like “Moonshine Blues” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” would become standards of the genre to be covered time and again. Ma Rainey, which began streaming on Netflix today, marks the final role for Boseman, who died of complications with colon cancer in August after keeping his diagnosis a secret for four years. Could Amsterdam's New Economic Theory Replace Capitalism? 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