Before Thomas A. Dorsey became the father of gospel music, he spent the mid to late 1920s at the piano accompanying Ma Rainey, the mother of the blues. “She was the star of her day,” said Gaye Todd-Adegbalola, a blues singer who has covered and written about Rainey. A new boxed set, released last week, offers the most complete look at Rainey’s recording career to date. She died four years later, and was little remembered outside the Black news media until August Wilson’s 1982 play “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” became a Broadway hit. The post Ma Rainey, Mother of More Than Just Blues, Comes Alive on New Release appeared first on New York Times.