This is the fourth of five volumes dedicated to the complete recorded works of Gertrude Ma Rainey, released during the 1990s by Austria's Document label. Mapping her recording activities from November 1926 to December 1927 with 22 single take titles, it opens with "Morning Hour Blues," a straightforward number rendered somewhat hypnotic by the combination of Jimmy Blythe's piano, Blind Blake's guitar, and the delicately handled xylophone of Jimmy Bertrand. Ma Rainey's accompanists on this disc also include cornetist B.T. Wingfield, trumpeter Shirley Clay, trombonists Kid Ory and Albert Wynn, clarinetists Johnny Dodds and Artie Starks, violinist Leroy Pickett, and pianist Claude Hopkins, destined to lead his own big band in Harlem during the 1930s. Like every volume in the series, this is a potent storehouse of undiluted early blues, strongly anchored and embellished by jazz musicians from New Orleans, Chicago, and New York. "Big Boy Blues" has a delightful solo by an unidentified tuba player who generates bas