June 12, 1928. The great Blues singer Ma Rainey steps up to the microphone at a studio in Chicago. She’s there to record a scandalous song called “Prove It On Me Blues.” It’s her answer to the rumor that she’d once attended a party with a bunch of other half-clothed women – a party that got busted by the cops. It’s a rumor she doesn’t deny. The song is just the latest of Rainey’s boundary-pushing moves. Her audience, and her record label, eat it up. How did Ma Rainey talk about sex and sexuality through the Blues? And in the America of that time, how was a boldness like hers even possible?
Special thanks to our guests: Darryl Bullock, author of Queer Blues: The Hidden Figures of Early Blues Music, which will be published this July; Dr. Steven Lewis, curator of Music and Performing Arts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and Dr. Tyina Steptoe, history professor at the University of Arizona and host of “Soul Stories” on KXCI Tucson. Thanks also to Dr. Cookie Woolner, history professor at the University of Memphis and author of The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women & Queer Desire Before Stonewall, which will be published in September.
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