THE first time I heard Ma Rainey I was shocked. I was 16 years old, and had just suffered my first major love trauma. The details are hazy now, but at the time the hurt was deep and the drama high.

I was the only person in the world who had ever been heartbroken, so how could anybody presume to understand, or attempt to make it better? I had the blues and I didn't even know it.

Until one Sunday morning, the diagnosis came through the airwaves. The radio was on and Ma Rainey was singing 'Don't Fish in My Sea'. I remember wondering who the hell she was, and how did she know what was going on with me? 'If you don't like my ocean, don't fish in my sea/ Stay out of my valley, let my mountain be / I ain't had no loving since God knows when / That's the reason I'm through with these no-good, trifling men / You'll never miss the sunshine till the rain begins to fall'.

It was my first time really hearing the blues, and her tone, her vibe, and even her soul coming through as she sang, made me listen and feel better. I had the blues, but they would pass. I learned a lot from Ma Rainey. She was a great lady and is a hero of mine to this day.

Born Gertrude Melissa Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia, in 1886, she first appeared on stage when she was just 14, after which she joined a travelling vaudeville troupe. As a stand-up comic, I hold vaudeville performers from the past in high esteem. There was none of this controlled, ironic stuff for vaudeville acts, and I respect the honest effort and sweat that goes into pulling all your tricks out of the bag for your audience. In 1902, Gertrude started performing in a blues style. Then she married fellow vaudeville singer William 'Pa' Rainey in 1904, and that's where she got her name, Ma Rainey.

I think that being one of the first people in the world to sing the blues is reason enough to consider her a hero. She was known as the Mother of the Blues. Between 1923 and 1928, she recorded over 100 songs, sometimes accompanied by musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and Fletcher Henderson. As when I first heard, 'Don't Fish in my Sea', many of Ma's songs make me feel part devastated/part thrilled by their melancholy, their toughness and the inevitability of it all. There's also her brilliant sense of humour and brazen backchat in songs like 'Ma and Pa's Poorhouse Blues'.

Unlike pop music, blues music is highly personal and honest. When blues artistes sing, it reflects who they are. When I compare early blues singers with some of today's pop singers, I get furious. Most of these performers stupidly rely on their looks and their soulless publicity teams to push their vapid nonsense into our lives in order to make money. Even through poor quality recordings and scratchy surfaces, Ma Rainey sings and you can feel it.

All the toughness of her life and character Tis there. She was not pretty: she was short and squat with heavy features and a mouthful of gold teeth. She went ahead and did her thing regardless, proving that talent and cajones matter more than being an identikit blonde with a head full of bleached teeth and little else.

Another reason I love Ma Rainey is her independent and defiant attitude. Women's blues were personal, but also political, and their songs created consciousness by naming the issues. The lyrics usually revolve around man . . . and sometimes woman . . . troubles, but other themes Ma covered were poverty, drinking and drug use, violence and criminal behaviour, and sex and political protest. To top that, she was openly bisexual and wrote and sang about it in 'Prove It On Me'. She was brave and truthful, but still funny and human.

She worked as part of many different productions, but also had her own shows, touring always in the southern States.

Audiences there loved her, and she was more than a performer to countless black women in the US. She demonstrated that African-American women could become economically independent. Ma Rainey was the composer, arranger, and manager for her own band, and she also ran two theatres in Georgia until her death from a heart attack in 1939, aged 53 years. This was an amazing accomplishment considering the times, with segregation laws firmly in place and discrimination against black people rife. Ma Rainey is an inspiration to me today to at least try and tell it like it is, to pay no heed to superficial fools and, of course, to always keep on keeping on.