Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

The owner of the studio and producer, Sturdyvant is “preoccupied with money, he is insensitive to black performers and prefers to deal with them at arm’s length” (9). He has no patience with Ma Rainey or her demands but allows Irvin to handle them as Ma Rainey’s music makes money and she must be kept happy. He is the bad cop to Irvin’s good cop, making each concession to Ma Rainey’s conditions seem like major allowances. He treats the performers like commodities, as evidenced at the end when he tells Levee that he doesn’t think that his music will sell while offering to buy his songs for an insultingly low price. The fact that Sturdyvant offers money at all for Levee’s songs show that he thinks the music will sell. He even asks Irvin at the beginning if Levee will be here, as he “want[s] to hear more of that sound” (11). He tries to exploit Levee by telling him that his songs are worthless, as if buying them is a favor. Paying Levee a nominal fee for his music will allow him to hire white performers to sing and play the songs, largely cutting Levee out of the equation. This exemplifies what would be a long history during the 20th century of label executives profiting off of white musicians who cover songs by black composers for minimal compensation.

Cutler “is in his mid-fifties, as are most of the others. He plays guitar and trombone and is the leader of the group, possibly because he is the most sensible. His playing is solid and almost totally unembellished. His understanding of his music is limited to the chord he is playing at the time he is playing it. He has all the qualities of a loner except the introspection” (12). From the beginning, Cutler professes that he is there to do a job and earn a day’s pay. He is happy to perform exactly as Ma Rainey directs. Cutler sees his place in the power structure and warns Levee to stay in his own place. However, he sees Ma Rainey as their boss, not the Sturdyvant or Irvin, as he knows that whatever Ma demands is what will happen. Cutler is also religious and becomes upset to the point of violence when Levee will not stop criticizing his God. As a musician in a backup band, Cutler is an old pro. He doesn’t want to discuss Toledo’s ideas about improving society for black men, refusing to take part in the argument between Levee and Toledo on the subject. Within the small sphere of the band, he is in charge and has no aspirations to anything higher. Cutler has been playing music with these men, minus Levee, for decades. Cutler handles the tension between Levee and the rest of the band by tackling it directly. He doesn’t hesitate to tell Levee what he is doing wrong and why. Cutler doesn’t back down. When he punches Levee, he continues to pummel him and doesn’t stop fighting when Levee produces a knife.

Slow Drag, a talented musician and “the bass player, is perhaps the one most bored by life. He resembles Cutler but lacks Cutler’s energy. He is deceptively intelligent, though, as his name implies, he appears to be slow. He is a rather large man with a wicked smile. Innate African rhythms underlie everything he plays, and he plays with an ease that is at times startling” (12). Like Cutler and Toledo, Slow Drag is in his 50s. He has a laissez-faire attitude, and, like Cutler, is there to earn a paycheck, not to make art or waves. Slow Drag has been playing music with Cutler for 22 years, a point he exploits when he talks Cutler into sharing his marijuana in the studio. Over those two decades, he tells Cutler, “I done lied for you and lied with you…We done laughed together, fought together, slept in the same bed together, done sucked on the same titty” (22).Although when questioned, Slow Drag admits that he added the last list item “to make it sound good” (23). According to Cutler, Slow Drag has no trouble seducing women and is quick on his feet, as evidenced by Cutler’s story about a woman whose fiancé confronted Slow Drag for dancing with her. He told the man that he was only trying to help her win money to buy him a watch. Slow Drag keeps a bottle of liquor in his locker, which he gladly shares with his bandmates. Slow Drag is unambitious, happy to do “honest work” (76) like his father before him. Like Cutler and Toledo, he has no illusions about Ma Rainey’s fame and understands that her influence doesn’t extend outside of the music world because she is a black woman. His tactic with his bandmates is to try to defuse the tension with stories and card tricks. 

The philosopher of the group, Toledo “is the piano player. In control of his instrument, he understands and recognizes that its limitations are an extension of himself. He is the only one in the group who can read. He is self-taught but misunderstands and misapplies his knowledge, though he is quick to penetrate to the core of a situation and his insights are thought-provoking” (12). Like Cutler and Slow Drag, Toledo is in his 50s and has been playing music for decades. Toledo is the most educated member of the band, and he sees the bigger picture of history and social structure. He often speaks in metaphors or offers anecdotes that sometimes go over the heads of his bandmates. When Slow Drag appeals to Cutler to share his weed by reminding him of their shared history, Toledo informs them that the practice is unconsciously mimicking African culture. Although the others are mildly offended, having learned to see Africa as primitive, Toledo’s understanding of his African roots is much more informed. Toledo sees beyond day-to-day survival or personal advancement and recognizes the need for African Americans to stand up and fight for social change instead of just “having a good time” (30). Although, as Levee points out, Toledo is talking in the abstract but not taking action himself. When Levee makes fun of Toledo’s shoes, Toledo is less interested in flash and appearance than he is in their utilitarian purpose. Toledo criticizes the stagnation of African Americans in the approximately sixty years post-slavery, referring to them as history’s “leftovers” (44). The white men brought Africans to the United States as slaves, but the generations of black Americans after emancipation are leftovers from that time, and now have the opportunity to start a new history. Toledo’s large ideas about social change make Levee’s interest in his shoes and his own advancement seem frivolous. When Levee kills him at the end, he kills the only voice in the room who is speaking for civil rights and looking toward the future of African Americans. Toledo tells the group that he had a wife and children, but his wife became religious and left him. Toledo’s method of handling group tension is to offer words of wisdom that alternately confound and anger his bandmates. When Levee complains that life isn’t fair, Toledo replies, “Oh, life is fair. It’s just in the taking what it gives you” (75).

A hothead “in his early thirties, Levee is younger than the other men. His flamboyance is sometimes subtle and sneaks up on you. His temper is rakish and bright. He lacks fuel for himself and is somewhat of a buffoon. But it is an intelligent buffoonery, clearly calculated to shift control of the situation to where he can grasp it. He plays trumpet. His voice is strident and completely dependent on his manipulation of breath. He plays wrong notes frequently. He often gets his skill and talent confused with each other” (15).Levee represents the younger generation, the changing of the guard. Cutler, Toledo, and Slow Drag have worked in the music business for decades and possess an understanding of their limited potential for advancement and the ways that white men control the industry. Levee wants more. He has an intense internalized anger from a formative event in his childhood when a group of white men, angry at his father for having the audacity to buy his own farmland, gang-raped his mother. His father gave up everything—his land, his family, and his life—to exact revenge and was subsequently lynched for it. Levee responds angrily to Toledo’s assertion that trying to advance in a white-dominated society made them “imitation white men” (77). Levee believes that he can use the white men, who want to profit off of his talent, to become famous and to obtain agency and power. And while his songs capture the hot new trends in the music business, Sturdyvant doesn’t want him—just the music he writes. Levee’s anger toward white men is as impotent as his anger at God, as he is ultimately powerless against those who hinder his ambitions. He therefore turns his anger toward his three bandmates, the older generation of black men who impose reality on Levee’s pipe dreams. At the end of the play, this anger comes to a head when Levee stabs and kills Toledo. Once this anger has been released, Levee immediately realizes that he has done something that he cannot undo. At the end of the play, Levee plays “a muted trumpet struggling for the highest of possibilities and blowing pain and warning” (92). Levee’s rash, rage-filled reaction not only silences Toledo, but himself as well. 

Based on the real-life figure, Ma Rainey is “a short, heavy woman. She is dressed in a full-length fur coat with matching hat, an emerald-green dress, and several strands of pearls of varying lengths. Her hair is secured by a headband that matches her dress. Her manner is simple and direct, and she carries herself in a royal fashion” (36). She is in her 40s and has been singing and performing since she was a teenager. Ma Rainey understands the music business and her place in it. She is aware that her voice and talent are in demand, and that the white men who pay her to sing are only interested in her as a commodity. As she explains, “If you colored and can make them some money, then you all right with them. Otherwise, you just a dog in the street” (63). Ma Rainey uses the leverage she has achieved to demand star treatment. This is how she punishes the white men who use her and forces them to work hard to earn the money she makes for them. Ma Rainey was one of the first African American professional blues musicians. She was a trailblazer as an artist, rightfully nicknamed the Mother of the Blues. The play, which takes place in 1927, represents the singer near the end of her career. The style of the blues that she sings has started to become outmoded. The play also marks the last year that the real Ma Rainey would record for Paramount, a major record label that signed her in 1923 and terminated her contract in 1927. The play also insinuates that Ma Rainey is a lesbian, or bisexual, as Cutler refers to Dussie Mae as “Ma’s gal” (72), warning Levee to stay away from her. The real Ma Rainey was likely also a lesbian or bisexual, based on allusions in interviews and her lyrics as well as an arrest record for allegedly hosting and participating in a 1925 orgy with women in her chorus.

Dussie Mae, who Cutler refers to as “Ma’s gal” (72), is “a young, dark-skinned woman whose greatest asset is the sensual energy which seems to flow from her. She is dressed in a fur jacket and a tight-fitting canary-yellow dress” (36). Ma Rainey buys her clothing, dressing her up so she looks nice when Ma takes her on tour. The play insinuates that Dussie Mae is Ma Rainey’s lover, and Ma gets angry when Levee tries to flirt with her. Dussie Mae rejects Levee’s advances at first but gives in when he tells her that Sturdyvant is planning to record him with his own band. She is a member of Ma’s entourage, and although she eventually lets Levee kiss her, she won’t consider becoming his lover until he has a band of his own.

Ma Rainey’s nephew, Sylvester, is “an Arkansas country boy, the size of a fullback. He wears a new suit and coat, in which he is obviously uncomfortable. Most of the time, he stutters when he speaks” (36). Ma brings him along to the recording session with the promise of 25 dollars and a voiceover job, despite the fact that Sylvester can barely speak without stuttering. Like Dussie Mae, he follows Ma’s orders as she herds him like a child. Ma also encourages him, insisting that he will be able to get the voiceover right even when it seems impossible. The band members, aside from Levee, accept his presence at rehearsal without question because he is Ma’s nephew, although Cutler later takes Irvin aside and tells him that he doesn’t think Sylvester can handle the part. In one sense, Ma is using her influence to raise up her nephew and give him an opportunity. In another, Sylvester is one of Ma Rainey’s outrageous demands of her white agent and producer, as she insists that they will pay for as many takes as necessary for Sylvester to get the voiceover right—a seemingly impossible task. Surprisingly, however, when they are recording, Sylvester presents the part perfectly after only a few takes. Unfortunately, Sturdyvant fails to capture the take due to technical issues. Ma protects and pushes her nephew, using her financial leverage to force Sturdyvant to pay him when the producer suggests that Ma has to pay him out of her own salary.