Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and is one of the biggest names in Blues history. She was extremely talented and touched on many issues through her songs, including alcohol, death, abandonment, erotica, injustice, love, murder, poverty, sex and homosexuality. Through this paper I hope to take a look at Ma Rainey and pick out of her voluminous collection a handful of songs in which I would like to take a deeper look into the lyrics and the underlying meanings. Most interesting to me are the gender bending and homosexual lyrics of Rainey and so that will be the focus of this research paper. Who is to say that Ma Rainey was not actually singing to other women instead of to men like most people would like to think? Through the works of Angela Davis, Sandra Lieb and Daphne Duval Harrison this paper will interpret Ma Rainey's work on a whole new level.
             Gertrude Pridgett was born in Columbus, Georgia on April 26, 1886 and married Will "Pa" Rainey in 1904. Since Rainey had already established himself as "Pa," it was only natural that when Gertrude married and joined his show that she became "Ma" Rainey. Later on Ma Rainey was said to be the "Mother of the Blues."
             In Angela Davis' book, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, the author states that there were three ways in which the emancipation was able to transform the slaves' personal lives: (I) no proscription on free individual travel, (II) education became a realizable goal for both sexes and (III) sexuality had the ability to be explored freely (8). "Emerging during the decades following the abolition of slavery, the blues gave musical expression to the new social and sexual realities encountered by African Americans as free women and men ... Sexuality thus was one of the most tangible domains in which emancipation was acted upon and through which its meanings were expressed" (4). Sexuality became a central issue...