Blues fans, rejoice: Queer legend Ma Rainey is coming to the silver screen. Directed by Tony-award winning playwright, George C. Wolfe and based on the play by Pulitzer Prize-winning author August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set to be released by Netflix on December 18.
But for those who can’t wait till the holidays to get a look at the indomitable Viola Davis (Fences) playing the iconic singer, the first trailer for the upcoming biopic came out today.
Known as The Mother of Blues, Rainey was born on April 26, 1889 in Columbus, Georgia. Around the time the singer was 13, she overheard a young woman singing a sad, sonically distinctive song about how her man had left her. Rainey, then a traveling vaudeville performer with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, was so struck by the girl’s subject and delivery that she started working similar music into her own performances. Acclaim and demand for the music, which would come to be known as the blues, followed, and Rainey moved north to Chicago, signing a recording contract with Paramount Records in December 1923.
The drama of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom picks up four years later, in 1927. After her first recordings for Paramount, Rainey’s career exploded, leading to both a tour and collaborations with some of the era’s most celebrated musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Nearing 40, the Rainey of Wolfe’s film navigates an industry obsessed with her sound — although it is reluctant to allow her control over the production of her music.
Following the lead of Wilson’s play, the film appears to be largely set during a single 1927 recording session in which concurrent dramas unfold: Rainey’s ongoing disputes with the white representatives at her label and a sonic revolution by Rainey’s band, one led, in large part, by an enterprising trumpeter named Levee (Chadwick Boseman). Boseman, who died of colon cancer earlier this year, offers his final performance in the film.
A trailblazing figure for more than just her sound, Rainey is an icon of early 20th century queerness, widely beloved for her signature no-f**ks-given attitude toward loving whomever she deemed worthy. This sensibility is perhaps most powerfully communicated through her 1928 hit, “Prove it On Me Blues,” in which the singer proclaims, “They said 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.” Likely a reference to an incident in which Rainey was arrested for hosting a queer orgy at her home, the song has survived as an emphatic affirmation of lesbian love and gender transgressive world-building.
In a recent interview, Davis spoke of her intention to honor Rainey’s unbridled persona. “She was unapologetic about her sexuality,” Davis told the digital magazine Zora. “I just feel like in playing her, I had to honor that.”
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