Fuck Yeah, Gender Studies!

so-treu:

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey - Prove It On Me Blues (1928)

Unique in pre-Stonewall American history is an assertive song of lesbian self-affirmation and defiance, “Prove It on Me Blues.” Written, performed, and recorded in 1928 by the famous early blues singer Ma Rainey, this extraordinary song of resistance features a woman-loving woman who proclaims her sexual interest in females and challenges the world to “prove it on me.”^[1]

Sung in the first person by Rainey in the character of a collar-and-tie-wearing, man-disdaining butch, “Prove It on Me Blues” is a rare and wonderful rebel anthem. (See below for lyrics.)

How did the amazing “Prove It on Me Blues” come to be written and recorded? The answer is found in Mother of the Blues by Sandra Lieb (University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), the major study of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and her work.

“There is strong evidence,” writes Lieb, who interviewed a number of Rainey’s coworkers, “to indicate that Ma Rainey … was bisexual.”

In 1925, just three years before she recorded “Prove It on Me Blues,” Rainey was reportedly arrested when Chicago police raided a wild party, catching Ma and the chorines from her show in a state of undress. Blues singer Bessie Smith is said to have bailed Rainey out of jail, and the bisexual Smith is the only alleged lover of Rainey’s who is specifically named by Lieb.

source: “Gertrude “Ma” Rainey’s Amazing Resistance Anthem”

I love Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey! I never knew this, though—although of course the “I’m sexual and what?” message of their work did not escape me, this fun fact somehow managed to.

Gotta dig out my old album…