August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Legacy of Blues Women of the 1920s
By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 20, 2012
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
By August Wilson
Directed by Liesl Tommy
The Cast: Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Dussie Mae), Corey Allen (Sylvester),
Jason Bowen (Levee), Thomas Derrah (Sturdyvant), Yvette Freeman (Ma Rainey), Will LeBow (Irvin), Timothy J. Smith (Policeman),
G. Valmont Thomas (Cutler), Glenn Turner (Slow Drag),Charles Weldon (Toledo)
Production Artists
Scenic design and costume design by Clint Ramos, Lighting design by Marcus Doshi, Sound design and music direction by Broken Chord Collective
The Huntington Theatre Company
Boston University Theatre
264 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
2 hours and 45 minutes with one 15 minute Intermission
The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning playwright, August Wilson (1945-2005) wrote sixteen plays starting with Recycle in 1973 and ending with Radio Golf in 2005. He is best known for the “Pittsburg Cycle” or “Century Cycle” focused on his home town. Each of the plays represents a decade: 1900s, Gem of the Ocean (2003), 1910s, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1988), 1920s, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), 1930s, The Piano Lesson (1990 Pulitzer Prize), 1940s, Seven Guitars (1995), 1950s, Fences (1987 Pulitzer Prize), 1960s, Two Trains Running (1991), 1970s, Jitney (1982), 1980s King Hedley II (1999), 1990s, Radio Golf (2005).
Huntington Theatre Company with its current production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the only play in the cycle that is set in Chicago and not Pittsburgh, the company has now produced the series of ten plays. Wilson, who was born Frederick August Kittel, Jr., worked closely with the Huntington which premiered several of his last plays.
Wilson who was raised as one of several children by his single mother had trouble in school and was largely self educated by reading extensively in the Carnegie Library. He focused on the masters of African American literature emerging first as a poet and then as a playwright. Writing on napkins and legal pads in bars and cafes he was particularly adept at absorbing nuances of character and language that inform the naturalism and authenticity of his dialogue. Many of the characters in his plays were adapted from his observations and acquaintances.
In that sense Wilson gave a voice and identity to a unique focus on African American vernacular and cultural identity. He developed into one of the foremost playwrights of his generation. His legacy casts a long and broad shadow over 20th century American theatre.
The work endures as a monument to be dealt with particularly in providing so many well crafted roles for African American actors. It is as though the idealism of the Harlem Renaissance, and the seminal writers he studied in depth, were passed along as a matrix for future generations.
In experiencing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, however, there are issues and conundrums both factual, motivational and philosophical. Wilson wrote with passion and agenda. When the play was first presented the impact of the realism of the characters and their rough, earthy language must have been shocking and galvanic.
Now three plus decades later that slice of life dialogue has become the lingua franca of black comedy, rap music, theatre and film. The director, Liesl Tommy, actually references that with a rap opening for the two acts. Several young actors appear briefly on stage as a metaphor for a new generation looking back on the past.
We know that his discovery of Bessie Smith (1894-1937) and a love of the blues was a major influence. For the provocative title of his play, however, he has focused on Ma Rainey (1886-1939). She was born Gertrude Pridgett and married William “Pa” Rainey at 18 in 1904. They toured as Rainey and Rainey as well as with the tent shows of the Rabbit Foot minstrels.
Her primary audience was in the deep south. There is an ironic comment in the play that her country blues records did not sell well in more sophisticated Harlem. She recorded in New York but was not commercially successful there.
Wilson sets the play in Chicago during a recording session of Paramount Records for whom she cut some 100 sides. Much of the first act centers on the interactions of the band members waiting for her to arrive. There are also the two white men, the least fleshed out of the characters, Thomas Derrah (Sturdyvant), who runs the recording studio, and Ma’s “fixer” or manager Will LeBow (Irvin). Tensions run high waiting for her arrival.
Eventually, after what stretched into seemingly interminable banter, character development, and plot exposition, Yvette Freeman (Ma Rainey) exploded onto the stage with a spectacular feathered robe over a beaded dress by Clint Ramos. She is accompanied by her nephew, the stuttering Corey Allen (Sylvester) and nubile, stunning Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Dussie Mae) whom Wilson has invented as Rainey’s flirtatious girlfriend.
It is unclear how and why Wilson morphed Rainey from a married woman into a lesbian.
It quickly becomes clear that this play is not about Ma Rainey. We learn little or nothing about her legacy and music. The frustration of the audience erupted when Freeman finally burst into song. Other than this brief moment, however, this was not an evening about a great artist and her music.
The drama includes music but Wilson did not intend this as a musical. While the band members, trumpet, Jason Bowen (Levee), leader, trombone and guitar, G. Valmont Thomas (Cutler), bass, Glenn Turner (Slow Drag), and piano, Charles Weldon (Toledo) sync well, other than Turner and possibly Weldon, they are not playing their instruments.
Even in the context of the early days of jazz and blues Wilson has presented Rainey as a diva. She makes demands. Nothing is going to happen until someone fetches three bottle of Coke. She insists that her stumbling, stuttering, slow witted nephew will record the intro to her song. And get equal pay for his inept efforts just like the other musicians.
Wilson’s Rainey has attitude in a trajectory of gifted, self absorbed, demanding, soul divas from the blues women of the 1920s through the tragic demise of a great artist, Whitney Houston.
What a pity that Wilson has taken such liberties while passing on the opportunity to flesh out the musical heritage, impact and legacy of the seminal Ma Rainey. Next to Bessie Smith, arguably, she is the only other woman blues singer of the 1920s who is known by the general public.
The first black woman to record was the now forgotten Mamie Smith in 1920. Legend has it that Sophie Tucker, a great star of the time and the ‘Last of the Red Hot Mamas’ blew off a recording session. Rather than waste the studio time Smith was recorded resulting in the first race record and hit tune “Goin’ Crazy With the Blues.”
Realizing that there was a market for this music a spate of now obscure women were rushed into the studio. While Rainey recorded with bands most of the women were accompanied by pianists like Clarence Williams and James P. Johnson, or generally mediocre side men. There were a number of stunning sessions with a then young and emerging Louis Armstrong. He recorded a few times with Rainey (1924 nine tracks with the Fletcher Henderson band) and Bessie Smith (1925 first, five songs, then six more in another two sessions). Armstrong was a session musician for many now neglected women: Virginia Liston, Eva Taylor, Alberta Hunter, Josephine Beatty, Margaret Johnson, Sippie Wallace (an inspiration for Bonnie Raitt), Maggie Jones, Clara Smith, Trixie Smith, Leola B. Coot Grant, Bertha Chippie Hill, Blanche Calloway, Hociel Thomas, Baby Mack, Victoria Spivey, Nolan Welsh, and Lillie Delk Christian. Others who did not record with Armstrong include; Ida Cox, Lovie Austin, Marie Gritner, Viola Bartlette, Shirley English, Anna Bell, Sara Martin, Ethel Waters (known for her TV character Beulah) and Alice Moore.
In his superb biography “Pops: The Life of Louis Armstrong” Terry Teachout summarizes his numerous recordings with the women of the blues in a couple of paragraphs. Some of this vintage material with Armstrong was pressed in several albums from the Aimez Vous le Jazz series on the French subsidiary of Columbia Records. Because of a general lack of interest and demand, other than Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and a handful of other women blues singers, little of this material has been reissued on CDs.
As the roaring twenties progressed there was a shift from the New Orleans style of ensemble playing by King Oliver, and Armstrong's Hot Five and Seven to the dance bands that evolved and thrived in Chicago and New York. By the end of the decade the blues ladies were no longer fashionable.
In the play Levee has created a new arrangement for "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" with a hot, Armstrong like, improvised introduction and more of a dance beat. He rails against the shuckin' and jivin' jug band style of Rainey's band. The record company wants his new version as more progressive and saleable but Rainey won't have it. She wants to be accompanied by and not competing with the instruments.
By 1929 when Bessie Smith recorded the Jimmie Cox tune "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" the lyrics had become ironically autobiographical. She was in a downward spiral when John Hammond produced her last great session that was a commerical failure. (1933 November 24 Gimme a Pigfoot; Take Me For a Buggy Ride; Do Your Duty; I'm Down In the Dumps. Frankie Newton (trumpet); Jack Teagarden (trombone); Chu Berry (tenor sax); Buck Washington (piano); Bobby Johnson (guitar); Billy Taylor (bass). Benny Goodman plays in Pigfoot.) Edward Albee used the circumstance of her death resulting from an automobile accident as the theme for the play Death of Bessie Smith.
Recording conditions in the 1920s were primitive. Electronic microphones were introduced mid decade and even then it was unlikely that more than one would be used. There was little ability to capture the lower register. Instead of bass guitar and drums, recording sessions relied on banjo, tuba and snare drum at best. Under such circumstances we have a faint shadow of the personas of these singers. The recordings require patience and only Bessie Smith has been fully remastered. Columbia bought Okeh records (for a pittance through moldy fig fan and producer George Avakian) and with it the entire inventory of Bessie Smith as well as Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions. They are milestones in the history of jazz.
There is an irony that time and critical attention have been unkind to the blues women. And just the opposite for male blues singers. There is an interesting contrast between the sexes. The women were strictly vocalists with instrumental accompanists. In their recordings we track the evolution from church and minstrel shows to the birth of jazz in the Chicago bands of King Oliver, Louis and Lil Hardin Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Fletcher Henderson.
The men, however, were mostly located in the Delta and generally accompanied themselves on guitar. Seeking them out became a fetish for the British rockers of the 1960s: The Yardbirds, John Mayall in varying incarnations, Jeff Beck, The Stones, The Animals, Long John Baldry, Brian Auger, Cream with Eric Clapton, early Fleetwood Mac and others. For that generation of rockers the Delta Blues and the hot licks of Robert Johnson were mother’s milk. With the exception of Memphis Minnie who played a mean twelve string guitar they mostly ignored the women blues singers.
Wilson touches on this legacy, hints at the issues, but ultimately uses Ma Rainey for his own dramatic devices. Exploits her, arguably, as much as the straw dog, vile, white men Sturdyvant and Irvin. They are the prototypes of the legion of often Jewish recording company executives and managers who ripped off generations of black musicians.
Given the thankless challenge of playing a white man in an August Wilson play the formidable Will Lebow deftly provides reasonable doubt to the intentions, greed and questionable loyalty of Rainey's manager Irvin. Wilson may well have been thinking of Joe Glaser the corrupt, mobbed up, long time manager of Armstrong. Their relationship was like that of the pilot fish and a shark. Ultimately Armstrong may have been the shark who sang "Mack the Knife" but under orders from Glaser. Complicated.
It was the norm to pay off musicians for a days work in the recording studio. There were no residuals in records that brought in lots of money and in some cases, like Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, continue to fill the coffers of Columbia/ Sony records. In Wilson’s play Ma Rainey got $200 for the session and the side men, including Sylvester, $25 each.
While black musicians routinely got screwed by record companies it created the fame that generated bookings. With the pervasive pirating of music and demise of record companies, today, that's more true than ever.
In one of the play’s most pernicious incidents Sturdyvant dashes the hopes and dreams of the volatile and brilliant Jason Bowen (Levee) by offering just $5 each to take the “worthless” songs off his hands. Levee had aspired to record his progressive music with his own band as Sturdyvant led him to believe.
Wilson’s depiction of callous exploitation is absolutely accurate. He uses it as a dramatic device to unhinge the volatile Levee with startling and tragic consequences. In an all too true trope Levee takes out his rage and frustration not on the white devil Sturdyvant but on the sensitive, bookish, philosophical and utterly lovable Charles Weldon (Toledo).
Deconstructing Wilson’s play, it strikes me that in his creativity and artistic vision Levee is modeled after Armstrong, with all of the genius but none of the violence and rage. While, so help me God, Toledo may well be the articulate, insightful, humorous, ironic and brilliant voice of Wilson himself. In this clash of generations, as a powerful and resonant metaphor, the rage of the young buck slaughters the oracle of world weary wisdom. It is an indicator of Wilson’s life experience and evidence of why he was such a potent, fearless, and far reaching artist. He was able to grab the throat of the conundrum of his community and squeeze the life out of it. That scene could have been accompanied by Nina Simone’s anthem “To Be Young Gifted and Black.”
Perhaps I have gone too far. Clearly Wilson’s flawed, ferocious play and its powerful Huntington production have pushed me to the edge. It results in restless internal struggle, rolling and tumbling as Muddy Waters would sing, that results from grappling with a formidable work of art. It is also appropriate that work on that level evokes a commensurate magnitude of critical analysis.
The legacy of Wilson is formidable. But not sacrosanct. It will be tested by time and must continue to evoke relevance for future generations. It demands that we look deeply and unflinchingly into its structures, themes and tangents.
No, ultimately, this play didn’t reveal to me anything about Ma Rainey that I didn’t already know. It took liberties and created aspects that do not ring true for the iconic artist. Writing in the 1980s perhaps Wilson was stretching too far to truly inhabit the characters and milieu of the 1920s. He was creating a trope that served the agit prop of an artist of his generation.
The play endures as wildly ambitious, courageous for its time, but also disturbing and flawed. Bringing us into the era and issues of the 1920s it serves as a fulcrum to leverage a deeper understanding of African American art and culture. As a member of the audience I am humbled and grateful to Wilson and The Huntington for this opportunity and experience.
It is what we expect and demand from our greatest artists.