In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
This week we will focus on the amazing black women who were among the first to freely express their lesbian sexuality and bisexuality on record. These artists were 50+ years ahead of their time and ahead of the world when it comes to embracing alternative sexualities and gender norms. We all owe them so much for their artistry and empowered advocacy.
While the guitar-based male artists of the following decade often get the lion’s share of credit for pioneering the blues, it is critically important to note that black women were the first to popularize the blues – and their success allowed them an empowering level of self-expression in the songs they recorded.
Ma Rainey’s “Prove It On Me Blues” is an assertive and proud anthem that celebrates lesbian sexuality and gender nonconformity – while daring the world to try and prove what happens behind closed doors. Rainey, who wrote the lyrics, openly declares her preference for women, wearing male-coded clothing, and behaving in male-coded ways.
“Went out last night, had a great big fight,
Everything seemed to go on wrong.
I looked up, to my surprise,
The gal I was with was gone.
Where she went, I don’t know,
I mean to follow everywhere she goes.
Folks said I’m crooked, I didn’t know where she took it,
I want the whole world to know.
They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me,
Sure got to prove it on me.
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.
It’s true I wear a collar and a tie,
Make the wind blow all the while.
They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me,
They sure got to prove it on me.
Say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me,
Sure got to prove it on me.
I went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.
Wear my clothes just like a fan,
Talk to the gals just like any old man.
‘Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me,
Sure got to prove it on me.”
The song had some direct biographical inspiration from an incident in 1925 when Rainey was drinking with a group of young women. “They made so much noise that a neighbor summoned the police. The impromptu party was getting intimate, and as bad luck would have it, the law showed up just as everyone began to let their hair down” [Albertson, p. 116]. Rainey was arrested and spent the night in jail. Bessie Smith bailed her out the next morning.
The advertisement in the Chicago Defender promoting this record shows Rainey wearing a collared shirt, tie, vest, suit jacket, and fedora. She openly flirts with two lithe young ladies while a police officer espies the situation from across the street. The ad states: “What’s all this? Scandal? Maybe so, but you wouldn’t have thought it of ‘Ma’ Rainey – But look at that cop watching her! What does it all mean?”
In her book “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism”, Angela Davis writes: “The blues women openly challenged the gender politics implicit in traditional cultural representations of marriage and heterosexual love relationships. Refusing, in the blues tradition of raw realism, to romanticize romantic relationships, they instead exposed the stereotypes and explored the contradictions of those relationships. By doing so, they redefined women’s ‘place.’ They forged and memorialized images of tough, resilient, and independent women who were afraid neither of their own vulnerability nor of defending their right to be respected as autonomous human beings.”
Though this disc has been a holy grail of mine ever since I first heard it, the original Paramount release is quite rare, and the few copies I’ve seen available at auction often go for several hundreds of dollars.
Luckily, I do have this bootleg reissue on the Ristic label was made by the young jazz musician and audio engineer John R. T. Davies sometime around 1949-50. He released an edition of 100 copies – and as you can see from the label, I have #57.
I’m so thankful for the beautiful, authentic, and empowered black women of the 78 rpm era!
Happy Pride Month! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, June 12, 1928.
Originally released as Paramount 12668.
This U.K. unofficial reissue dub was released as Ristic 6.
Credits:
Ma Rainey – vocals
Carl Reid – jug
Georgia Tom Dorsey – piano
Martell Pettiford – banjo
Herman Brown – kazoo, washboard, tub drum
Sources:
Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey, Sandra R. Lieb, University of Massachusetts Press, 1981
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Y. Davis, Pantheon Books, 1998
Bessie, Chris Albertson, Yale University Press, 2003
Blues & Gospel Records 1890-1943, Robert M. W. Dixon, John Godrich, and Howard Rye, 4th Ed., Clarendon Press Oxford, 1997
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