Louise Juliette Talma

She was born October 31, 1906 in Arcachon, France. Her father passed away when she was young and her mother was a singer. Her mother and her moved to New York City in the summer of 1914. She studied chemistry at Columbia University while pursuing piano and composition studies at the Institute of Musical Art. she won the Seligman Prize for composition also. She traveled to Fontainebleau, France in 1926 to 1939, to study at the american Conservatory. She studied under very prestigious people and at that time she was a teacher herself as well as a student. she taught at Hunter College for over 50 years and left in 1979. She became the first American to teach at the Fontainebleau School. 
"It took some time before I knew I was a composer…. I thought all composers were dead. Composers were people you found in a book, who had written all this wonderful music that you heard at concerts. I knew from a very early age that I wanted to compose, but the idea that there were actually people out there now, in the flesh, actively writing music, did not occur to me for quite some time." This is a quote from what she said in the New York Times. Some of her early compositions are "Song of the Songless (1928), Three Madrigals (1928), Two Dances (1934) and In principio erat verbum (1939). She was the first woman to receive the award of Guggenheim fellowship. In the 1970s she went back to Fontainebleau to study during the summer. She composed a piece called Summer sounds for Clarinet and String Quartet written between 1969 and 1973. She is one of Americas foremost composers of the Twentieth century. 

http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Sp-Z/Talma-Louise-Juliette.html

Roots of Blues Ma Rainey
It starts off with a banjo playing then her vocals. The form is ABA. At the end of each stanza she has sort of a drag to each word. It is 12 bar blues. The verses are 12 counts and the chorus is 8 counts. It has a summery feel like maybe it was a hot day and the banjo player and Rainey were sitting on the porch having a good time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsEsjN8dGQg