Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom stars Viola Davis as one of the most influential blues singers of all time. The real Ma Rainey was the first stage entertainer to bridge the gap between the white and the Black performance circuits. “If you don’t like my ocean, don’t fish in my sea,” Rainey warned in her 1927 song, “Don’t Fish in My Sea,” but the crowds couldn’t stay away. She was one of the first entertainers to play integrated shows in the Jim Crow South, and the first popular singer with authentic blues in her setlist.
“Madame” Gertrude Rainey was the “Mother of the Blues,” but the world knows her as Ma. She wasn’t the first woman to sing the blues. She’d actually heard it while playing vaudeville, tent shows, and cabarets. Rainey wasn’t even the first woman to record the blues. She...
“Madame” Gertrude Rainey was the “Mother of the Blues,” but the world knows her as Ma. She wasn’t the first woman to sing the blues. She’d actually heard it while playing vaudeville, tent shows, and cabarets. Rainey wasn’t even the first woman to record the blues. She...
- 12/19/2020
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
Netflix’s “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker,” the story of America’s first self-made female millionaire, takes place between 1908 and 1918. But the music, instead of focusing on the early jazz that might be expected, runs the gamut from ragtime to hip-hop.
“Madam C.J. Walker is a central, seminal historical figure who I had heard about from my mother, who heard about it from her mother,” says music supervisor Morgan Rhodes. “Her story has been part of the fabric of black history down through the years — one that belongs to generations of women.”
Octavia Spencer plays Walker, the daughter of freed slaves who created a line of specialized hair products for African American women. Her entrepreneurial skills and intense drive made her one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful women. When she died in 1919, she lived near the Astors and the Rockefellers on...
“Madam C.J. Walker is a central, seminal historical figure who I had heard about from my mother, who heard about it from her mother,” says music supervisor Morgan Rhodes. “Her story has been part of the fabric of black history down through the years — one that belongs to generations of women.”
Octavia Spencer plays Walker, the daughter of freed slaves who created a line of specialized hair products for African American women. Her entrepreneurial skills and intense drive made her one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful women. When she died in 1919, she lived near the Astors and the Rockefellers on...
- 3/26/2020
- by Jon Burlingame
- Variety Film + TV
“We gotta change around here,” Mavis Staples sang toward the very end of Wednesday night’s 18th annual Americana Honors & Awards Ceremony at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Having been presented the evening’s Inspiration Award by pioneering Civil Rights activist and Freedom Rider Ernest Patton earlier in the evening, Staples’ song was a powerful reminder that change-inspiring music-makers are, like Staples put it herself during her acceptance speech, “still carrying on.”
But during a show that at once gestured at the future of the Americana genre while still firmly upholding its rigid past,...
But during a show that at once gestured at the future of the Americana genre while still firmly upholding its rigid past,...
- 9/12/2019
- by Jonathan Bernstein
- Rollingstone.com
Glee diva-in-training Amber Riley made an impressive New York stage debut last night in Cotton Club Parade, a Broadway-ready revue boasting a spirited selection of classic jazz and swing numbers, some eye-popping choreography, and Wynton Marsalis’ incomparable 16-member Jazz and Lincoln Center All Stars orchestra. The 26-year-old L.A. native best known as Mercedes Jones showed off her pipes and some fine footwork on two standards by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” (She also offered a note-perfect take on “Stormy Weather,” a tune that...
- 11/15/2012
- by Thom Geier
- EW.com - PopWatch
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