When has a woman’s story truly been her own? Time and time again in truth and in fiction we have witnessed the stories of women sidelined for their male counterparts. However, in moments of exceptionalism, stories of these women are showcased. Still, “rarely has the complex and layered engagement between Black women been acknowledged” in the media (Kernodle 27). In history books, popular culture, and of course, in cinema, “the trope of competitiveness, hostility, and violence between Black women” has dominated the conversation (27). This holds true for the many women involved in the early years of jazz. As initral as they were to the birth of jazz as a musical genre, much of jazz history has centered around the greats, mostly men, who fell into the stereotype of drugs, trauma, and abuse, surrounded by other male geniuses and creating this genre of music together. In recent years, the push towards women’s stories has become more prevalent and necessary for a true recount of jazz history. As stated by Sherrie Tucker in her work Big Ears, when gender is ignored in jazz, “jazz studies risks overlooking a category of analysis that closely follows race (and is, in fact, intertwined with it) as the social category most capable of deconstructing this dominant discourse” (377). In the films Bessie (Rees 2015), The United States Vs. Billie Holiday (Daniels 2021) and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Wolfe 2020) audiences have witnessed the attempt to forefront women in jazz, all of which were closely related during their time of fame. Each with their own tribulations and triumphs, all of these films bring to light the dualities of being both a woman and Black in a time when both were heavily persecuted.
Jazz history has primarily focused on the homogeneous relationships between male artists. While collaboration and greatness has been associated with male musicians, the same cannot be said for women in jazz. For much of its history, women have been erased from jazz’s origin and those who prevail are painted as isolated and exceptional. As showcased in the film The Girls in the Band (Chaikin 2011), women were integral to jazz performance and jazz evolution, however, in combination with renewed gender binaries following World War II, they were quickly ignored. While names such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday are not unrecognizable, these women are examples of exceptionalism. Women were considered invisible because “playing good enough meant playing like men” and those who did play or perform like men were “exceptional women” who could “enter the discourse without changing it” (Tucker 384). Their inclusion often solidifies the idea that jazz history “is not sexist, but merit based” (384). Though “Black women have engaged in self-definition; [creating] systems of knowledge that [provide] the skills to navigate political, social, and economic spheres; and [form] “safe spaces” that support their process of brokering power” these relationships are not always forefronted (Kernodle 28). Instead, in narratives about women in jazz, collaboration is exempted and Black women are expected to “battle to be the “one” female creative voice that survives and earns a place in the historical narrative” and many of those battles focus on vocalists (29).
Billie Holiday became popular in the 1930s and lived a life of music, addiction, and trauma. The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) follows Billie from the peak of her career to nearing her death, focusing on her song ‘Strange Fruit’ and her drug addiction. The film opens to a graphic image of a lynching. The camera pans down from what first seems to be an image of a group of white men, only to reveal a lynched body. Over the image, text explains the failure to pass an anti-lynching bill in 1937. Following that image, the text reads that Billie’s rise to fame was largely due to the popularity of ‘Strange Fruit,’ a song which describes lynching in the South. Staying true to the title, the film has more to do with Billie Holiday’s addiction than her as an artist or her art. Though it perhaps is difficult to separate Billie from her history of substance abuse since in many ways it was prevalent in her career, that does not explain the centrality of men within the film. As jazz scholars have pointed out, the relationships between women in jazz was not as isolated and competitive as it was painted to seem. However, in the film The United States vs. Billie Holiday, this is not the case. Billie is surrounded by men, from the beginning to end of the film. Billie is hurt, aided, and followed by them. While covering the span of a decade, the film follows Billie as she struggles against the United States government that wishes she stop performing ‘Strange Fruit’ as they believe it could incite rioting and violence. However, the narrative often drifts into the relationship between Billie Holiday and Jimmy, the FBI agent assigned to arrest her for drugs. In place of the real and complicated relationship between Holiday and Tallulah Bankhead, a famous actress, or Holiday’s relationship with other important female jazz figures such as Bessie Smith, the film carries a narrative that follows a relationship that most likely did not actually exist. It is a sad and depressing portrayal of Billie Holiday’s influence and presence as an important figure in Black history and counts on the narrative of sad and isolated jazz women.
From the first moments we see Billie on screen, it is clear that the narrative is moving in the isolated direction. The image of the lynched body dissolves into a medium shot of Billie, alone center stage as the spotlight illuminates her figure. The camera changes to a close up of Billie’s face, she stares into the camera with a large white flower adorned in her hair and bright red lipstick. The auditorium looks empty, she is utterly alone. In the following scene, Billie Holiday is seen being interviewed by Reginald Lord Divine, who introduces her as someone who has “played in movies out in Hollywood with the likes of Louis Armstrong.” She is introduced as a woman who plays like men, not as Billie Holiday. The camera shifts to show Billie, following her introduction, and audiences see a hollow person, smoking a cigarette with sad and tired eyes. Much of the rest of the film pushes this idea of Billie, struggling, tired, and alone. However, this is not the only depiction of women in jazz.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020) is the on screen adaptation of a play by the same name, following a heated recording session in the 1920s. The film covers a single day, perhaps a few hours, where Ma Rainey is being recorded by white producers and tensions rise when a member of the band, Levee, wishes to change the music in his direction. Though the film highlights Ma Rainey’s presence and dominance as a performer, this film is an example of a narrative of jazz which is popular when it comes to women. The all male jazz band which accompanies Ma Rainey in this recording session works apart from Rainey herself. The “narrative of the competitive personality or the inability to “get along” among Black women musicians” shapes the film in quite a few instances (Kernodle 28). The main conflict of the film happens between Levee and Ma Rainey, who each have a version of the song ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,’ arguing as to which version will be recorded. Rainey also insists that her nephew, who has a speech impediment, be included in the recording to which the band members and producers oppose. Within the narrative of the film, Ma Rainey is presented as “disruptive to the work being done in spaces where jazz is created” and that her strong willed nature is “destructive rather than productive to the working environment” (Kernodle 28). Similarly, Billie Holiday is painted as destructive in The United States vs. Billie Holiday. She cannot beat her addiction, goes back on promises, and lashes out and betrays her band. There is no discourse on her influence on jazz or other jazz performers who follow her. Similarly, Ma Rainey, in her film, demands that her nephew be included, arrives late, insists her version be recorded over Levee’s rendition, and refuses to record until she receives a cold coca-cola. All of these moments paint Ma Rainey as difficult and troublesome, instead of a transcendent artist who inspired many. In contrast, Levee is productive because he is moving jazz forward, while Rainey is stuck in the past. The difference in narrative is further accentuated by Ma Rainey’s character in the 2015 biopic Bessie.
Bessie (2015) follows the life of Bessie Smith, a blues singer who became popular in the 1920s, particularly in the South. Bessie is a biopic in which audiences witness a once beloved star rise to fame, only to fall under the pressure of addiction and domestic issues. Still, besides living much to the expectations of a jazz story, Bessie differs in more ways than one to what we have become accustomed to. Bessie’s relationships with other women and music itself are examples of how this film forefronts the subject over dramatization, becoming a great example of how collaboration between women can also lead to productive and imaginative work. The contrast of Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Ma Rainey in Bessie is best explained by the first few moments in which audiences see Ma Rainey first in each film. In Bessie, Bessie sits in an audience, anticipating Ma Rainey’s performance. Out comes the announcer who introduces Ma Rainey to the stage. The camera focuses on gold and shiny shoes and a suitcase in Rainey’s hand as she steps onto stage to a cheering and gleeful crowd. The camera pans up to reveal Ma Rainey in all her glory adorned in a gold sequence dress and gold headband. At the wave of her hand, clad with a feathered fan, she allicites a holar from the crowd, to which Bessie sits in astonishment. The camera cuts between Ma Rainey on stage and Bessie’s focused face, she leans forward and nods her head along with the music, hypnotized by Rainey’s presence. In contrast, Ma Rainey’s first moments in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom seem as though each film is talking about a completely different person. Leading up to her reveal, audiences are already primed to see Ma as a troublesome artist. She appears on the screen descending from a staircase dressed in a gold gown and fur scarf, her hands gloved as she is followed by her nephew and girlfriend. The hostility radiates off of Rainey as she grabs onto her girlfriend, Dussie Mae, and looks around to the other patrons of what looks to be a hotel and restaurant lobby. The patrons all sit and stare, there is no gleeful crowd or applause. Rainey clicks her tongue as the trio walks out, all the while we hear Slow Drag, the bass player, explain “don’t nobody say when it comes to Ma, she’s gonna do what she wanna do.”
In another moment, the narrative of competition between Black women is further exemplified in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The scene begins as Cutler, a member of the band, brings up the song “Moonshine Blues,” a song often performed by Bessie Smith. Ma quickly responds by saying “Bessie what? I ain’t thinking about Bessie… Bessie ain’t doing nothing but imitating me. What do I care about Bessie?” The two are pinned against each other instead of working together as they are seen in Bessie. Ma Rainey and Bessie are both painted out to be seen as women who are unable and unwilling to work together, and instead compete to become the sole female vocalists on stage. This is an example of how we see “exceptional women work primarily in isolation from each other because while the stage can accommodate as many exceptional men as possible, there is space for only one exceptional woman” (Kernodle 29). In comparison, films such as Paris Blues (Ritt 1961) relies on the idea of collaboration between male artists, without there being a competition of who gets to stay on the stage. The ways in which women are isolated in cinema and in history allows “for the exclusion of other women and lends support to a narrative of invisibility that occurs in jazz histories as it relates to women musicians'' and “this narrative of the exceptional woman has defined common understandings of how these women worked and created art” (29). Again, as highlighted in the documentary The Girls in the Band (2011), this is not true. Women often worked alongside one another to create jazz and this is no expectation to the relationship between vocalists.
In Black Bottom, audiences are led to believe that the relationship between Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith is a negative one, full of greed, jealousy, and competition. Instead, that is far from the case in Bessie. Following Ma Rainey’s first performance, Bessie soon finds herself on Ma Rainey’s train, asking for the opportunity to join within her ranks. Ma Rainey says “you just got to decide for yourself” and “the blues is not about the people knowing you, it's about you knowing the people.” From their first few moments together, Rainey becomes an example to Bessie and Bessie decides to stay on the train and join her. As the train begins to move, Bessie sits as Rainey examines a cut Bessie received from an altercation with a man. All the while, one of Rainey’s female lovers comes into the room, gives Rainey a kiss and leaves. Rainey says “what you know about it?” to which Bessie responds “same thing you know.” The two share the same experiences of being queer Black women in blues, wanting to learn and create art together, not against each other.
In the following scene, Ma Rainey is seen negotiating terms with a theater owner, showing how easy theater owners attempt to underpay Black performers. Ma Rainey brings Bessie in order to teach her how to be stern with the white theater owners and avoid exploitation. The two are seen then within the empty auditorium, side by side in the center of the stage. Ma Rainey pushes Bessie to step almost at the edge of the stage, the camera showing the two in the center of the screen. In this moment, the two are equals, pushing each other on the stage to work. Ma Rainey explains to Bessie to imagine random crowd members as subjects to her songs, asking her “now where’s that heifer that stole your man?” and “oh, there’s that pinched-back man that stole all your money.” Though they eventually part in order for Bessie to create her own path in music, the two stay important to one another in the narrative of Bessie. Following their split, Bessie is contracted to record for Columbia Records. The scene follows Bessie's recording session, as Ma Rainey is seen on her train wearing loungewear. She pulls back a paper cover to reveal the title of Columbia Records. Ma smiles as she pulls out the record and admires it. The camera cuts to Ma standing next to her record player, smiling as she inhales from her cigarette, hand on hip, swaying back and forth to Bessie’s sultry voice. Though only a small addition to the relationship between Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, this scene contradicts the idea that Bessie and Rainey were at odds with each other as Black Bottom suggests. Ma is proud of Bessie’s success and supports her work though they have parted ways.
Bessie’s fall from grace soon follows as Bessie is consumed by addiction and domestic issues. She suffers the loss of her husband and son, and leaves her large estate to live with her brother. The extent of Bessie’s alcohol addiction is grave as we see Bessie brother pick up empty glass bottles from the floor and pat Bessie’s forehead with a damp cloth as the once beloved star lays in bed in the small apartment. Clarence informs Bessie that they are leaving on a trip. The two drive out into the countryside, Bessie sits with wonder written on her face, only for the camera to reveal Ma Rainey herself, smiling and laughing with open arms waiting for Bessie’s arrival. Bessie begins to jog, equally happy to see her mentor and friend after experiencing such hardships. The two sit in Ma Rainey’s sun room as Ma reads aloud an article written in the Vanity Fair about female blues singers. The article states that of all the women blues singers, Ethel Waters is “superior to any other women stage singer of her race.” Ma Rainey laughs, stating “see how they love to instigate, set us up against each other?” In this moment, Ma Rainey sheds light on the narrative that Black women have experienced in entertainment. Though we as an audience see Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey sitting together and healing, the papers pin them against one another. It is evident how jazz historians, especially white jazz historians, felt the need to create power structures and spaces to exclude Black women and highlight the idea of exceptional female artists that were “superior” to their peers (Kernodle 31). Instead, the film is proof of “the homosocial networks that Black women musicians created to counter the growing resistance to their presence on the bandstand during the mid-twentieth century” (31).
Ma Rainey is the first person Bessie can confide in about the issues within her family. Rainey suggests that Bessie focus on herself and it is in her time spent with Ma Rainey that Bessie finally heals. In another scene, we see Ma Rainey begin to pull out outfits, dresses and headbands, feathers and glitter, all from her days on the stage. After returning the gold shoes Bessie wore during their shared stage time, Rainey puts on a sequence and feathered headband and begins to sing ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.’ She ushers Bessie to stand with her and the two sway their hips and sing along laughing. Ma says “oh, I love you baby” and Bessie replies “I love you too Ma.” The camera then cuts to show Bessie, now healed and ready to take the stage once more, this time wearing the gold shoes given to her by Rainey. Bessie then highlights a culture of jazz that is few times associated with women. Bessie and Rainey are examples of “the development of homosocial networks that enable the individual musician to gain knowledge, develop a certain skill set, and refine their individual musical voice” (31). Bessie leaves this experience with new eyes, wanting to redefine herself as an artist and move forward instead of back, all thanks to her relationship with Ma Rainey.
Though men and addiction are part of Bessie’s story, Bessie herself and her relationships with women are at the utmost forefront of this film. This is evident starting at the opening scene, where audiences are immediately shown the image of Bessie herself, portrayed by Queen Latifa, as the camera pans down to her blue lit figure. The muffled sounds of the audience clapping is drowned out by the sound of Bessie’s own breathing and we see Bessie move between backstage members. Later, we know this to be the moments before Bessie returns to her home only to find it empty, her husband and son gone. The audience is introduced to Bessie, the person, giving hints of her childhood, before we see her as a performer in only the first few moments of the film. Contrary to male centralized jazz films, Bessie depicts a story of mobility in spite of men, instead of being presented as an “obstacles to greatness” or “to define the hero's stature” (378).
Quickly following the opening of the film, we are taken back to 1913 as the camera pans down the backstage steps and out a door to where Bessie is engaged in sexual activity with a man. He quickly becomes aggressive to which Bessie defends herself only to be rushed on stage to a booing crowd. Following this scene, we are shown Bessie sitting in bed with another woman, they are lovers, as they talk about the issues Bessie must face in order to be successful in the blues. In comparison, many “jazz heroes achieve greatness through male musical bonding in homosocial bands (constructed as aggressively heterosexual against backdrops of prostitutes, wives, female lovers, and shimmying female dancers)” such as we have witnessed in films such as Paris Blues (Ritt 1961) (378). Women, like their male counterparts, worked in collaboration as jazz expects.
As portrayed in film, women in jazz have been isolated from their peers. The spaces they created for their music, the relationships they formed with one another, and the aid and power they held together is often omitted from their stories in place of ideas of isolation and exceptionalism. However, as we can see in the film Bessie (2015) it is possible to change this narrative and forefront women in their own stories. Relationships between Black women in jazz were nurturing, helpful, and productive as we witness with Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Beyond her relationship with men, Billie Holiday was also taken under the wings of Melba Liston, which “developed into a type of mother-daughter dynamic” (Kernodle 38). A jazz musician's story does not start and end with trauma and as jazz history moves forward, one can only hope that more jazz historians will align with Sherrie Tucker and Tammy L. Kernodle and consider the importance of gender as a lense in which we study jazz.
Work Cited:
Bessie. Dir. Dee Rees. HBO Films, 2015.
The Girls in the Band. Dir. Judy Chaikin. Artist Tribe, 2011.
Kernodle, Tammy L. “Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of
Validation.” Black Music Research Journal , vol. 34, no. 1, 2014, pp. 27–55. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacmusiresej.34.1.0027. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Dir. George C. Wolfe. Netflix, 2020.
Paris Blues. Dir. Martin Ritt. Pennebaker Productions, 1961.
Sherrie Tucker. Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2008.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Dir. Lee Daniels. Lee Daniels Entertainment, 2021.
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