A Broadway revival opened on February 6, 2003 at the Royale Theatre, featuring Charles S. Dutton as Levee and Whoopi Goldberg as Ma.
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Subsequent UK revivals have taken place in Liverpool at the Playhouse (2004, direction: Gemma Bodinetz) and the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre in a production starring Antonio Fargas as Toledo, Ram John Holder as Slow Drag and Johnnie Fiori as Ma (2006, direction: Jacob Murray).
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The play's title refers to a song of the same title by Ma Rainey referring to the Black Bottom dance.
Gossett became a major film star, Guillaume achieved fame in the television series Soap and Benson, Merritt starred in The Wiz and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and the television series That's My Mama.
Ma Rainey | Ma Rainey's Black Bottom | Chuck Rainey | William Rainey Harper | William Rainey Marshall | Sid Rainey | Homer Rainey | Bobby Rainey | Wayne Rainey | Richard Rainey | Rainey Haynes | Rainey Endowed School | Barbara Allen Rainey |
Cheatham played in Albert Wynn's band (and occasionally substituted for Armstrong at the Vendome Theater), and recorded on sax with Ma Rainey before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1927, where he worked with the bands of Bobby Lee and Wilbur de Paris before moving to New York City the following year.
Among Richards' accomplishments are his staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, debuting on Broadway to standing ovations on 11 March 1959, and in 1984 he introduced August Wilson to Broadway in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Starting in 2006, the first inductees chosen by the Paramount GIG ('Grooves In Grafton') organization, in Grafton, were Charley Patton, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Skip James, Thomas Dorsey, and Henry Townsend.
She also found long lost songs from better-known artists such as Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Mae West.
Playwright August Wilson used the term "ghetto" in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), both of which draw upon the author’s experience growing up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, first a neighborhood of early European immigrants, then a black ghetto.
During his Memphis Blues days he played with Eddie Bond, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Ma Rainey, Little Laura Dukes, Big Sam Clarke and many others.