Was ma.rainey gay
Smithsonian Collections Blog
"When you see two women walking hand in hand
Just look 'em over and experiment to understand"
– George Hannah, "The Boy in the Boat"
In 1925, the Chicago police arrested blues singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey in her dwelling for hosting a so-called “lesbian party.” While Rainey had been married to a man for 21 years, she was known to take female lovers. It was even rumored that she was romantically emotionally attached with another known blueswoman, Bessie Smith, who bailed Rainey out of jail the following day.
| Ma Rainey and the Wildcats Jazz Band, 1923. Bernice Johnson Reagon Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History |
Getting her launch on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1900s, Ma Rainey made her mark as a blues performer just as the genre’s popularity hit its stride in the 1920s. By 1925, she was two years into a lucrative recording reduce with Paramount Records, had worked with Louis Armstrong, and was in the middle of what would become a four-year musical partnership with Thomas Dorsey’s Wild Cats Jazz Band. Ma Rainey had earned
The Real Gertrude "Ma" Rainey Was a Trailblazing Bisexual Blues Singer
Ma Rainey's Ebony Bottom, released on Netflix on Dec. 18, is already poised for Oscar nominations. With a phenomenal cast and costumes, and an electrifying score, Ma Rainey is a dazzling biopic that follows the real-life "Mother of Blues," Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. Ma, who is portrayed by the infinitely talented Viola Davis, is shown to be a trailblazer in every sense of the word. As a Black woman in the '20s, she captivated her audience with her influential voice, and demanded the recognition she deserved — and she got it.
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Aside from her talent, charisma, and determination, Ma Rainey is also depicted as queer in the movie, with a focus on her girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige). But was Ma actually queer? And was Dussie based on a real person?
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Was Ma Rainey gay?
It's believed that Ma Rainey was bi, due to suggestive lyrics in some of her songs, and the proof that she got busted by the police for hosting a queer orgy. Although Dussie Mae is a make-believe character, Ma was romantically linked
Ma Raine's Bisexuality Was A Revolutionary Act In The 1920s That Still Matters Today
Netflix's new motion picture, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom—based on August Wilson's play of the same name (and the playwright's first Broadway hit)— follows the "Mother of Blues" and her band in during a recording session on one sweltering Chicago afternoon. Viola Davis stars as the titular Ma Rainey alongside the late Chadwick Boseman (who some already speculate could triumph a posthumous Oscar for his performance as the band's trumpet player, Levee.)
"I think one of the reasons that August was drawn to her is [that] she lived outside the rules. And when somebody lives outside the rules, it becomes very clear what the rules are," director George C. Wolfe told The New York Times. "If you were a Black chick, if you waited around for somebody to acknowledge your authority, it was never going to happen. So you had to claim your power."
The excellently-cast ensemble film largely centers on the struggle for power between Ma Rainey's blues band and the white record producers who revenue from her music. (One scene shows Ma refusing to chant unless the producers buy her a Coca-Cola. &qu
When people think about the early blues today, they tend to imagine rugged, working-class men with guitars sitting at the crossroads making deals with the devil. Yet according to Paige McGinley's Singing the Blues, the first recorded account of blues, from 1910, describes the recital of Johnnie Woods, a female impersonator; the blues was sung by his ventriloquist dummy.
Woods wasn't an accident or an exception; the image of blues as an expression of authentic, swaggering masculinity is a latter-day myth, promulgated by such performers (impersonators?) as Mick Jagger and Robert Plant. Originally, though, blues and the closely related form of jazz embraced a much wider range of gender expressions and sexualities. Blues and jazz were marginal forms in the early 20th century not just because they were African-American, but also because they dealt explicitly (and sometimes very explicitly) with queer statement and gender play. Johnnie Woods was only the beginning. And arguably Woods wasn't even the beginning.
Here's a rundown of some of the most formative queer figures in blues history.
Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey was supposedly performing as promptly as 1902, though she wasn't r