Chapter 6: Bluesmen/Blueswomem

at the time Bessie Smith made her singing performances in the brothels, she met a very important figure for your career: Ma Rainey "Mother of the Blues."

Ma Rainey:

Known as "Mother of the Blues" Ma Rainey is extremely important figure in the history of the Blues. Born Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey on April 26, 1886 in Georgia and was a striking figure in the musical world of his time, starting his career at age 14. It was one of the first singers to become professional and record their own songs.

Besides all his musical importance, Ma Rainey was a very controversial personality. In 1904 she married a comedian of theater, with whom he had two children. Bisexual, she was arrested in Chicago in 1925 because there was a party given by the authorities deemed "indecent" because several scantily clad women participated in the celebration. In 1928 Ma Rainey released a song that surely rocked the morality prevailing at the time: "Prove It On Me Blues", which celebrated lesbianism.

He died on December 22, 1939, victim of a heart attack.

Dinah Washington - Piano blues/jazz

Dinah Washington was born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, August 29, 1924. Moving to Chicago in 1928, Ruth and her mother sang and played piano in St. Luke's Baptist Church.

In 1942, while she was singing in clubs, she was invited to join Lionel Hampton's band; she then took up the name of Dinah Washington.

    Dinah's popularity eclipsed that of Lionel Hampton's band and she finally went solo. Though she sang jazz, blues, pop, and R&B, she was primarily known as "Queen of the Blues".

Dinah lived large, with her seven marriages, her penchant for clothes, cars, furs, and diets and her famously feisty personality, testy one moment and generous the next.

Dinah Washington died in Detroit at age 39, on December 14, 1963, from an accidental overdose of diet pills combined with alcohol.

For many years after her death, it was nearly impossible to obtain earlier Dinah Washington recordings; record dealers would only carry her later work from 1959 to 1963.