(ThyBlackMan.com) When I think about the roots of blues music—the raw honesty, the pain wrapped in poetry, the joy carved out of hardship—I think of Ma Rainey. Her voice was more than a sound; it was ...

Long before her six Grammy nominations and her signature 1973 hit “Midnight at the Oasis,” a young Maria Muldaur was befriended by a pioneering blues singer-songwriter named Victoria Spivey. A ...

The real Rainey would be out of a job just a year later: classic blues was fading in popularity in favor of swing jazz, and the advent of talking pictures had dented the centrality of live ...