“Red Beans and Rice” – Gladys Bentley (1929) 🏳️‍🌈

In celebration of Pride month 🏳️‍🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!

One of my favorite artists of the Harlem renaissance is Gladys Bentley – a wildly popular black lesbian who performed in men’s clothing and sang cleverly worded risqué songs that scandalized and enthralled listeners.

Unfortunately for us, only a small part of her career found her actively recording her music. This disc was one of four that Bentley recorded for Okeh in 1928-1929. During the height of her career in the 1930s – when she was at her most transgressive – no recordings exist.

Here, we find Bentley singing about a male partner who is stingy with money and love.

“He don’t buy no clothes – he don’t keep his laundry clean.
He’s short on his lovin’ – stingiest man I ever seen!”

Though singing about a heteronormative relationship, Bentley positions herself as the breadwinner who financially supports and puts up with her man’s insistence on “red beans and rice” though she yearns for chicken. She undermines the power of the heteronormative relationship by enumerating the many unsatisfying aspects of it and further hinting at her own unspoken desires.

Recorded in New York City on March 26, 1929.
Released as Okeh 8707.

Credits:
Gladys Bentley – vocals
J. C. Johnson – piano

Sources:
Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed
“In My Well of Loneliness: Gladys Bentley’s Bulldykin’ Blues” from Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, James F. Wilson, University of Michigan Press, 2010