Ma Rainey News

Ma Rainey singing "Booze And Blues" Ma Rainey singing "See See Rider Blues" in 1925.

SOUTHFIELD - Like the Blues? Then visit the meeting room of the Southfield Library at 6:30 p.m. on Nov.

A one-night-only benefit performance of the new musical Low Down Dirty Blues will be presented Oct.

A one-night-only benefit performance of the new musical Low Down Dirty Blues will be presented Oct.

Grambling State University's department of theater arts opens the season with "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" at 7 p.m. Friday and Sunday at Sandle Theatre.

Ma Rainey 's Black Bottom. First produced in 1984, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is the play that propelled August Wilson to fame, and it has everything that makes the playwright great: eruptions of humor, rage, pettiness and affection, all given resonance by a broadly humanistic sense of history and context.

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I. Janis Joplin was born on January 19th, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas.

Harlem Speaks: Featuring Sandra Reeves-Phillips, Vocalist, Thursday, October 8th, 6:30 - " 8:30 pm @ the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, 104 East 126th Street, Suite 2C Songstress and dramatic actress Sandra Reaves-Phillips is a modern day griot, a keeper of the musical traditions of her artistic ancestors, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, ...

MP3 of the classic "Stack O' Lee Blues" as interpreted by the great Ma Rainey. From the 78 RPM vinyl.

Collectively, the bravura actors in Court Theatre's revival of 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' - the play that put August Wilson on the map when it was produced on Broadway in 1984, and was the only one of his 10 plays about African-American life in the 20th century to be set in Chicago - have probably performed in most, if not all of Wilson's mighty ...

Die! Mommie Die! It's been forever since we've had really good, outrageous, dirty-minded, over-the-top camp in Denver, so Die! Mommie Die! is a particular delight.

Shadow Theatre's last celebratory opening took place over a year ago, when then-artistic director Jeffrey Nickelson unveiled the company's comfortable, brand-new theater to a throng of elegantly dressed well-wishers. The show was Dinah Was , and though it featured the magnificent Ren Marie in the title role, both script and production were weak.

Court Theatre in Chicago has announced casting for its new production of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , directed by resident artist Ron OJ Parson, to run Sept.

For their first official presidential date, President and Mrs. Obama attended an August Wilson play.

For their first official presidential date, President and Mrs. Obama attended an August Wilson play.

While names such as Bessie Smith , Ma Rainey , or Ida Cox might initially come to mind when thinking of classic female blues singers, it'd be hard not to include Bonnie Raitt among the names of the best blues singers - male or female - who followed.

T hough Mamie Smith proved that a blues record could sell, and Ma was a bona fide instigating tour de force, it was Bessie Smith who was the most popular, highest paid blues singer of the 1920's and '30's. Even back then, and her record company promo people had something to do with it, Bessie was known as "The Empress of the Blues." She was one of, ...

T here are some other firsts, kinda. They're more like blues royalty to us. If the blues had a father, then it couldn't be born without a mom.

Two-time Blues Music Award winner for Contemporary Female Artist of the Year Janiva Magness may be reminiscent of vocal masters Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, but she paces her soul with the deep, dark resonance of a Johnny Cash howl.

"St. Louis Blues" by W.C. Handy T here are so many firsts, so many "fathers" and so many "kings" of the blues, one wonders sometimes.