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Jazz Archives for February 11, 2007
3:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Today's Highlight: "Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues"
"Ma Rainey first appeared onstage in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel and vaudeville stage revues, that included Blues and popular songs. In the 1920s Rainey was a solo star of the national black-vaudeville circuit.
It was not until 1923 that Ma Rainey signed a recording contract with Paramount. She was billed as the "Mother of the Blues", which wasn't far off the mark. Few historians can point to any real Blues singers before Ma Rainey. She ended up recording 100 songs between 1923 and 1928 on Paramount Records.
These sessions featured many of the best African-American jazz musicians of the 1920s.
Montana Public Radio’s Joe Korona produces and hosts Jazz Archives, taking us through the evolution of various genres of music—ragtime, blues, small-group swing, big-band swing, boogie-woogie, bebop and more. Jazz Archives focuses on musical personalities and characters as well as instruments and styles.
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