Due to the (incredibly cursory) research I did before starting this small Ma Rainey project, I deduced that this was the other album I wanted to track down and listen to after the fantastic 1990 compilation CD Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Maybe I should have just stopped with that one because this one was a disappointment. The sound quality is about the same as on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; on a few tracks it’s a bit better, on a few a bit worse, but overall they shake out okay in that regard.
But, as you can tell by the title, this is the fourth CD in a five-CD set put out in the mid to late nineties intended to release everything Rainey ever recorded. These kind of projects are doubtless invaluable to music historians and artist completists. But to the rest of us, they have some foundational problems. Number one, there’s just no curation at all; whereas the people putting together Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom carefully picked out 14 of her best songs, the people who put this CD out just had to say, “Okay, these are the next 22 songs she recorded, so I guess that’s the album.” So, you’re just going to, law of averages here, get some stuff that ain’t that good and you’re also forced into putting songs on the CD even if the remaining recordings of them are in really bad shape. Finally, did you notice that I said “22 songs?” Because when you’re doing the complete recordings, you just kinda stuff every CD pretty full. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom clocked in at 14 songs and right around 45 minutes; this one is 22 songs and over 65 minutes. And I guess that makes a difference to me because I did just kind of get tired of this one. It’s over twenty minutes longer than Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and everybody knows I love an album that just gets in, gets down to business and gets out in under 45 minutes. It’s hard for a 45 minute album to be boring or feel too long; it’s pretty easy to get bored with a 66 minute album, especially when all the songs have very much the same feel. Well, pick up the 1990 CD compilation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; it’s a kicker, start to finish. This one has a few of the same songs on it and some of the new songs here are good, but it’s, taken overall, much more mediocre as a listening experience. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – for music historians and Rainey completists only, this release includes mediocre songs and runs too long for anyone else to be enthusiastic about it. 2 ½ stars.