Ma Rainey House

Ma Rainey House Review

The child of minstrel-show performers, blues singer Gertrude Pridgett (1886-1939), more famously known as Ma Rainey, the "mother of the blues," toured in tent shows, levee camps, and cabarets throughout the South and Midwest. She recorded more than 100 songs and entertained with the greats, including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Tommy Dorsey. She's buried in Porterdale Cemetery, an extension of an old slave cemetery, on 10th Avenue. The Ma Rainey House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is now open to the public as a museum.