Tuesday, April 23, 2024
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Carrie Anne O'Grady is a 14 year old who will be entering the 10th grade at Auburn High School in Auburn, NY.  An honor student, she is a member of L.E.A.D. USA, and this spring performed in the school's production of the successful Broadway play, The Wiz.

 
  

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Gertrude Ma Rainey

  
Carrie Anne O'Grady
 
 
Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was the “Mother of the Blues.”
She was born on April 26, 1886, a firecracker with no safety fuse.
Ma was the second of five children born to Thomas and Ella Allen Pridgett.
Even as a child, her talent was not something you would forget.
 
She began her career at age fourteen,
In a talent show, “Bunch of Blackberries,” that went like a dream.
She soon began traveling in vaudeville and minstrel shows,
Where she met William “Pa” Rainey and that’s the husband she chose.
 
Rainey and Rainey; Assassinators of the Blues,
Toured the country, while she made her troubles her muse.
In 1923 she began her recording career with Paramount,
Recording sassy soulful songs… more than I can count.
 
She was one of the first women to record the blues professionally,
And her raw moaning style pleased her people’s ears ancestrally.
Cranking out cool compositions with some of the finest musicians of the day,
Louis Armstrong, Joe Smith, and Coleman Hawkins were all on her buffet.
 
In 1933 Ma Rainey called it quits,
She knew times were changing and there’d be no more hits.
Ma managed two theaters in Columbus and Rome,
She spent the remainder of her life back home.
 
Madame Rainey died of heart failure on the 22nd of 1939 in December,
The way she pioneered the classical blues is something we will always remember,
If only Gertrude Ma Rainey lived to see the way,
She inspired so many of the blues artists we hear today.

 
  

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