Ma Rainey
In 1902, in a small Missouri town, a girl walked into Ma Rainey's tent one morning and sang about a man who had left her. It was, musicologist John Work later wrote, so "strange and poignant" that she learned it on the spot and made it an encore. She'd been touring since her teens with a minstrel troupe out of Columbus, Georgia, where her grandmother and both parents sang. In 1904 she married the dancer William "Pa" Rainey; they worked tent shows and vaudeville for a dozen years -- once billed as "Assassinators of the Blues" -- before Paramount signed her solo in 1923. Over five years she cut roughly a hundred sides, gravelly-voiced and dripping in gold, before the label dropped her as old-fashioned in 1928. The girl in Missouri never recorded a note. Rainey did, which is the only reason anyone can point to where the blues began.
By the early 1910s, Rainey and W. C. Handy were pulling out of minstrelsy on parallel tracks -- he a bandleader publishing the South's tent-show melodies as sheet music, she a headliner absorbing them into her act. Blues historian Elijah Wald pins the moment exactly: "The blues era really sort of starts with W. C. Handy in 1912, and then with all the women who started recording in the 20s." Rainey's own touring set proves the overlap was real, not just chronological -- music historian Jas Obrecht's account of her show lists Handy's "Memphis Blues" right alongside her signature closer, "See See Rider."
listen forHandy's sheet music turned blues form into something a touring singer could drop straight into a live set, which is exactly what Rainey did, working "Memphis Blues" into her show alongside her own material. On the 1924 recording of "See See Rider," listen for how she and a young Louis Armstrong trade short phrases, voice and cornet answering each other over a steady blues vamp -- the same call-and-response pocket that made Handy's tune adaptable enough for any singer's stage act to absorb.