╨PARA ╚PAR@ ` └TEXT ` ▓Rainey, Gertrude Pridgett1886╨1939singerBorn on April 26, 1886, in Columbus, Georgia, Gertrude Pridgett made her first public appearance about the age of fourteen in a local talent show called ╥Bunch of Blackberries╙ at the Springer Opera House in Columbus. Little else is known of her early years. In February 1904 she married Will Rainey, a vaudeville performer known as ╥Pa╙ Rainey, and for several years they toured with Negro minstrel groups as a song-and-dance team. In 1902, in a small Missouri town, as she later recalled, she first heard the sort of music that was to become known as the blues. Derived from the parallel traditions of Negro spiritual and gospel music and of field songs and hollers, both still carrying the distinctive patterns and harmonies of their African roots, the blues was evolving as a music of lament, nostalgia, and yearning. Ma Rainey, as she was known, began singing blues songs and contributed greatly to the evolution of the form and to the growth of its popularity. In her travels she appeared with jazz and jug bands throughout the South. While with the Tolliver╒s Circus and Musical Extravaganza troupe she exerted a direct influence on young Bessie Smith. Her deep contralto voice, sometimes verging on harshness, was a powerful instrument by which to convey the pathos of her simple songs of everyday life and emotion. The popularization of the blues in the second decade of the century, in large part owing to the work of W. C. Handy, whose ╥Memphis Blues,╙ 1912, ╥St. Louis Blues,╙ 1914, and other songs became classics of the genre, opened new fields to African-American performers. In 1923 Ma Rainey made her first phonograph recordings for the Paramount company. Over a five-year span she recorded some 92 songs for Paramount╤such titles as ╥See See Rider,╙ ╥Prove It On Me,╙ ╥Blues Oh Blues,╙ ╥Sleep Talking,╙ ╥Oh Papa Blues,╙ ╥Trust No Man,╙ ╥Slave to the Blues,╙ ╥New Boweavil Blues,╙ and ╥Slow Driving Moan╙╤that later became the only permanent record of one of the most influential popular musical artists of her time. She continued to sing in public into the 1930s. She retired to her home in Columbus, Georgia, where she died on December 22, 1939. ╓styl `
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