Roots of Jazz and Blues with King Henry

Episode 4, Ma Rainey and Her Daughters

Welcome, welcome to Roots of Jazz and Blues with King Henry here on W A Y O L P Rochester. Today's episode is about the great female blues singers of the 1920s. This genre, known as classic blues, is about love, sex and hardship. Now there are so many great singers and so many great songs. I wondered how to pick just one hour's worth of music. So I decided to go simply with the sides that are in my own 78 collection. Now if you'd like to start collecting blues 78s, forget about delta blues singers like Blind Lemon Jefferson that we heard last week. Those records go for hundreds or thousands of dollars. But popular female blues singers from the 1920s sold in such enormous quantities that records by the people who are here today such as Mal Rainey or Mamie Smith are still affordable. Our journey today begins with these two. Mal Rainey was born Gertrude Pridget in 1886. She became known as Mal Rainey after her marriage to Will Paul Rainey in 1904. She worked in vaudeville on the black minstrel circuit. In 1914 she went to New Orleans where she met King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and other musicians. Her music moved away from minstrel to blues. In 1920 she signed with Paramount and recorded hit after hit. The following song from 1923, Barrelhouse Blues, refers to a barrel house, namely a cheap disreputable bar.

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Her wild glittering costumes and fabulous shows featuring Frank's sexuality really made her the Madonna of her day. Or for you millennials who don't understand the reference to Madonna, the Lady Gaga or Katy Perry of her day. By 1928 she was making the enormous sum of $350 a week. But as we hear from this song, The Walking Blues, she still woke up with her head bowed down.

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Our next artist, Mamie Smith, was no relation to Bessie Smith. Like Ma Rainey, she began in Vaudeville. She was born in Ohio, but her career was based in the clubs of New York City. She was the first black woman to record blues in 1920 with her song, Crazy Blues. Unfortunately, that record is not yet in my collection, so instead we'll jump a year ahead to Mamie Whip, Mamie Spank.

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Well, perhaps because of all that whipping and spanking, on the flip side of that record, Mamie Smith tells us that she is free, single, and disengaged.

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Rosa Henderson was another New York City based singer who like Lucille Hegeman was part of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing of music, art and literature in Harlem in the 1920s through the 1930s. Rosa Henderson recorded over a hundred songs under many pseudonyms including Gladys White and Mamie Harris. One under her own name is Every Woman's Blues from 1923 Rosa Henderson.

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Ethel Waters is remembered today as an icon of jazz, Broadway, and popular music, but she began as a singer of blues. Like so many of our other artists today, she was raised in poverty, but even sadder she was born of the rape of a teenage mother, and then she herself married at age 13 to an abusive man. Fortunately, she left him. She was working as a hotel maid when she sang at a party and so impressed the audience that she landed her first singing job at a Baltimore hotel. Her career took off when she moved to Harlem in New York City in 1925. Let's hear that famous song, Ethel Waters, Shake That Thing.

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Next is one of my favorite performers, Victoria Spivey. She grew up in Texas. As a child, she sang in her father's string band, and as a teenager, she performed with another Texas native who we heard in episode two, namely Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1926, she signed with OK Records, a label for many black performers. She recorded one of the most famous blues songs, Black Snake Blues, which was composed by Lonnie Johnson, who we also heard from in the previous episode.

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In 1927, Victoria Spivey recorded one of the most notorious songs of the 20s, Dopehead Blues. This song about taking cocaine included the lyrics, Just give me one more sniffle, another sniffle of that dope, I'll catch a cow like a cowboy and throw a bull without a rope.

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Despite her often outrageous songs, Spivey had a mostly happy life and a long career. In 1961, Spivey founded a record label that helped reignite the careers of many nearly forgotten blues and jazz artists who we'll hear on some of our future shows. We close out today's shows with three Blue Blues songs. By Blue Blues, I mean Full of Humor About Sex. This genre is sometimes called Hocum Blues. The first is by husband and wife duo Wesley Wilson and Coote Grant. They were vaudeville singers, dancers, and comedians and recorded under many names. The following, they were billed as Hunter and Jenkins. 1923 Hunter and Jenkins Meat Cuttin' Blues.

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In the 1930s and 1940s, Georgia White was a popular singer of many Hocum songs. The following is one of the bluest blues songs in my collections, I'll Keep Sittin' On It If I Can't Sell It. 1937 Georgia White.

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Very little is known about Lil Johnson. We don't know when she was born or where or how she died or when and really nothing outside of the period from 1936 to 1937 when she recorded 40 racing songs - I meant to say racy songs - including the following good advice to plumbers and mechanics, If It Don't Fit, Don't Force It.

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