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As a teenager, Rainey joined a traveling vaudeville troupe that took her to St. Louis, where she heard the blues performed for the first time in 1920. Two years later she married vaudeville singer William “Pa” Rainey, immediately billing herself Gertrude“Ma” Rainey.
Rainey (who had kept her bisexuality a secret), was arrested in 1925 in Chicago for hosting an “indecent party” with a room full of semi-naked women. In her song “Prove It On Me,” Rainey sings about her apparent bisexuality:
They must have been women, 'cause I don't like no men.
It's true I wear a collar and a tie, Make the wind blow all the time
They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me.”
In 1933, Rainey retired from performing as the blues began dying out. She returned to her hometown of Columbus, Georgia and operated two theaters, The Lyric and The Airdrome until she died of a heart attack in 1939. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
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