And now an adapted version of that play has come roaring into movie theaters. August Wilson, then an up-coming-playwright, made her the title character of a play that became his first Broadway hit. She would soon be nearly forgotten until decades later, in the 1980s. Ma Rainey’s fame peaked in the Roaring Twenties. Along the way, in her journeys across the South, she learned (and helped to shape) the blues: a style of music named after feelings that can range from utter despair to “who cares?” Born in 1886 or maybe earlier, in Georgia or maybe Alabama-at a time when Black lives were not always diligently recorded-she progressed from singing locally to performing in a major Black-owned traveling vaudeville show. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was a big woman who aimed for the big time. ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,’ adapted from the August Wilson play, has Viola Davis as a singer striving for the upper hand in the early 1900s.
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