Black entertainers- Musicians

Whenever black history is taught in schools we only cover certain topics or even people such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr, and Rosa Parks because they are considered safe to teach about. Slavery is rarely taught and it usually goes straight to the civil rights movement of the 60’s. Black history is more than that because every aspect of American history has been touched and built up on by a black person. Let me introduce to you several people might have heard of along with some that you probably haven't.

Ever hear of the phonograph? Well the first star of the phonograph was a former enslaved man named George Washington Johnson. He was born on October 29, 1846 in Virginia. Johnson moved to New York in the 1870s and became a street performer. His songs "The Whistling Coon" and "The Laughing Song,"' which were essential minstrel pieces and the most popular American songs in the 1890s record industry.By 1905, Johnson's popularity had declined and he was hired by his friend Len Spencer, now a successful artist and booking agent, as an office doorman where he worked and lived for several years before moving back to Harlem. In 1914, at the age of 67, George W. Johnson died from pneumonia. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York.

Welcoming to the stage is the Mother of the Blues…….Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. She was born Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia on April 26, 1886. Making her debut as a teenager, she performed with the Bunch of Blackberries revue at the Springer Opera House in Columbus. Later singing with traveling vaudeville acts in tent shows, honky-tonks, and carnivals. She met her future husband, comedian, singer, and dancer Will “Pa” Rainey, and the two were married in 1904. Forming a double act (“Ma and Pa Rainey”) they toured with various African-American minstrel troupes and vaudeville groups. Rainey and her husband separated after twelve years of marriage which led to Ma creating her own show: “Madame Gertrude Ma Rainey and Her Georgia Smart Set.” Rainey signed a recording contract with Paramount Records in 1923, making her one of the earliest recorded blues musicians. Between 1923 and 1928, she recorded almost 100 records, many of them national hits that are now part of the American musical canon. Her 1924 recording of “See See Rider Blues” (for which she was accompanied by a young Louis Armstrong) was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2004. Her story inspired famed playwright August Wilson’s 1982 play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which takes its title from Rainey’s 1927 song of the same name (which in turn refers to the black bottom dance trend of the 1920s). It was a Broadway success and was recently adapted as a film. In Ma’s later years, she returned to Columbus, Georgia to live with her brother. She owned and managed two theaters and was active in the Friendship Baptist Church, where her brother was a deacon. Rainey passed away from heart disease on December 22, 1939 at the age of 53.

And following the “Mother of the Blues “ Ma Rainey on stage …… we have the “ Father of the Blues, W.C. Handy. Composer, musician and music publisher William Christopher Handy was born on November 16, 1873, in Florence, Alabama. Handy joined a minstrel show at the age of 15. In 1892, he formed a band called Lauzette Quartet, but the band was forced to split when the fair was postponed until 1893. Handy's first big musical break came in 1896, when he joined W. A. Mahara's Minstrels as its bandleader. He stayed with the group for several years. At one performance in 1898, Handy met Elizabeth Virginia Price, whom he married in July until her death in 1937. In 1900, Handy and Elizabeth settled down in Huntsville, Alabama, where Handy worked as a music teacher, but by 1902 he was on the road again in Clarksdale, Ms., where he headed a band called the Black Knights of Pyhtias. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, Handy had settled in Memphis, Tn, where he performed frequently at the Beale Street clubs. Sometime in 1909 Handy wrote "Mr. Crump," was later reworked and titled becoming "Memphis Blues." Handy made a deal to get the song published in 1912, making it the first blues song ever published and becoming a commercial hit. Unfortunately he never got to reap the financial rewards of its success, having sold the rights to the song and fallen prey to exploitative business practices. Learning his lesson the hard way, he decided to create his own publishing venture with a songwriter named Harry Pace. His next hit, "St. Louis Blues" was in 1914, under the Pace & Handy Music Company, (which later became known as the Handy Brothers Music Company, after Pace left the venture). "St. Louis Blues" was another massive success and would be recorded many times over the next several years. Other Handy hits include "Yellow Dog Blues" (1914) and "Beale Street Blues" (1916). He would eventually be credited with composing dozens of songs. By 1918, Handy moved his business to New York and scored success with the composition "Aunt Hagar's Blues." He continued to promote blues to large audiences during the 1920s, editing the book Blues: An Anthology (1926) and organizing the first blues performance at Carnegie Hall in 1928. Handy worked steadily throughout the 1930s, publishing Negro Authors and Composers of the United States in 1935 and W.C. Handy's Collection of Negro Spirituals in 1938. A few years later, in 1941, he published an autobiography, Father of the Blues. Experiencing problems with his eyesight for years, Handy was blind by the mid-1940s due to a skull fracture. Handy married Irma Louise Logan, in 1954, and lived to experience his works performed by popular jazz greats. The blues composer died of pneumonia in NYC on March 28, 1958, at the age of 84. More than 20,000 people attended his funeral at a church in Harlem, and thousands more lined the streets to pay their respects. Only months after his death, his life story played on the silver screen in theaters across the country in the film St. Louis Blues, which starred singer Nat King Cole as the legendary composer.

Lizzie Douglas ( Memphis Minnie) was born on June 3, 1897, in Algiers, LA.Throughout her childhood, her family always called her "Kid." When she was seven years old, the Douglas family moved to Wall, Ms. just south of Memphis. The following year, she received her first guitar for Christmas. She learned to play both the guitar and banjo and performed under the name Kid Douglas.In 1910, at the age of 13, she ran away from home to live on Beale Street in Memphis, Tn. Her sidewalk performances eventually led to a tour of the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus. She returned to Memphis and became embroiled in the Beale Street blues scene. She met and married guitarist Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929. Minnie and McCoy often performed together and were discovered by a talent scout from Columbia Records that same year. They went to NYC for their first recording sessions, and it was then that she changed her name to Memphis Minnie. McCoy and Minnie released "Frisco Town" ( she sang alone) and "Going Back to Texas" (a duet). In 1930, Minnie released one of her favorite songs "Bumble Bee," which led to a recording contract with the Vocalion label. Later that year, she and McCoy released "I'm Talking About You" also on Vocalion. The couple continued to produce records for Vocalion for two more years,before leaving and moving to Chicago becoming a part of the city's blues scene and introducing country blues into an urban environment. McCoy and Minnie recorded songs together and on their own for Decca Records until they divorced in 1934.Minnie began to experiment with different styles and sounds using the name Texas Tessie. She recorded four sides for the Bluebird label in 1935, they included "Good Mornin”, “You Wrecked My Happy Home," "I'm Waiting on You," and "Keep on Goin.”In August of that year, she returned to the Vocalion label to record two songs in tribute to boxing champion Joe Louis: "He's in the Ring {Doing That Same Old Thing) which was later released in 1994 as a collection called The Great Depression: American Music in the '30s by Columbia} " and "Joe Louis Strut."In October of 1935, Minnie recorded with Casey Bill Weldon for the first time on "When the Sun Goes Down, Part 2" and Hustlin' Woman Blues." She also teamed up with manager Lester Melrose, the single most powerful and influential executive in the blues industry during the 1930s and 1940s. By 1939, Minnie had recorded nearly 20 sides for Decca Records and eight sides for the Bluebird label before returning to the Vocalion label. She had also met and married her new musical partner, guitarist Earnest Lawlars, also known as Little Son Joe. They began to release and record material on Okeh Records in the 1940s. Their earliest recordings together included "Nothin' in Ramblin'" and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues." In 1952, Minnie recorded a session for the legendary Chess label, when it was just two months old, which included"Broken Heart" and a re-recording of "Me and My Chauffeur Blues." The following year, she released her last commercial recording after 24 years in blues music, "Kissing in the Dark" and "World of Trouble" on the JOB label. Within the next few years, Minnie's health began to fail. She retired from music and returned to Memphis.In 1958, she performed one last time at a memorial for her friend, blues artist Big Bill Broozny. Periodically, appearing on Memphis radio stations to encourage younger blues musicians. In 1960, Minnie suffered from a stroke and became wheelchair bound. The following year, she had a second stroke when Little Son Joe passed away. By the mid-1960s Minnie lived in the Jell Nursing Home and no longer could survive on her social security income. The news of her plight spread, and magazines such as Living Blues and Blues Unlimited appealed to their readers for assistance where fans sent money and musicians held benefits to help her. On August 6, 1973, Memphis Minnie died of a stroke in the nursing home and in true blues fashion, was buried in an unmarked grave at the New Hope Cemetery in Memphis. In 1980, Memphis Minnie was one of the first 20 artists inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Her work was featured on several blues compilations throughout the 1980s and 1990s including I Ain't No Bad Girl and Queen of the Blues.