Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

The mother of the people.

We're gonna play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

What's the story behind this song?

[laughs]

The liner notes have a lot of detail.

What is something that we should know about Ra Ma Rainey, that you wish people would know about her?

I would like people to know that she w- really was not like the character in the show Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Mm.

And he is so good at it.

'Cause he had that going that year, as well as he had, uh, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which like, that's a, like, an award caliber performance.

He was up for an Oscar for it.

Like, it's like he was doing it all.

Yeah.

Which begins with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Yes.

Which was premiered here.

And at 7.30 p.m., great organ music at Yale in Marquand Chapel, Yale Divinity School, featuring Francesco Serra.

Two free events with master artists on the same day.

A heads-up to look out for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at Yale Rep starting on October 2nd and Dracula at Hartford Stage starting October 9th.

I spend hours in the Yale Art Gallery.

Um, and we've talked about several movies with her.

Um, so again, like we've covered before Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Um, she did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Julie and Julia, The Reader, Doubt.

Um, she also does a ton of theater.

Really, honestly, he was one of the best in that year.

Or something like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, where there are bigger performances around him, and he's just sort of like the glue holding those scenes together.

But this being a big leading role for him, where he gets a lot of this attention, obviously goes on to this Oscar nomination, it sort of feels like it kickstarts the next part of his career, where you get Sing Sing the year after this, right? He gets consecutive nominations there? Yeah, because it's only just the past two out of the past three years of the Oscars.

And then, you know, who knows what will happen this year with Michael? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I think George C. Wolfe...

I liked Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

I thought that was a pretty well-directed movie.

As a white listener, I sometimes worry that I'm eavesdropping on a conversation not meant for me, almost like Joel Chandler Harris when he created the caricature that became Uncle Remus.

This brought me back to your review of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom from May and to the discussion of how August Wilson is so expert at sharing the conversations Black men have.

Three side notes.

One, Vincent, I know you hate how Philly claims, folks, but Coleman Domingo is Philadelphia born and raised.

My wife and I went to my wife goes to like a seasonal playhouse in Pasadena.

And she took me to see Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the play yesterday.

And so we went to the play and then we went out to dinner with our friends, ate Himalayan food that pretty much burned my face completely off, but it was so fantastic and flavorful.

And then we came back, we came home and we watched Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a 2020 movie with Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman.

Chadwick Boseman was, this is his last movie role.

He was nominated for an Oscar for this role, lost to Anthony Hopkins.

Like I, I basically didn't know Widows was where that run started.

But you look at Ma Rainey, you look at, um, uh, what was the one where she was the queen with the machete in Africa that was just-

The Woman King.

The Woman King.

Yeah.

I mean-

He was in Ma Rainey's-

I would have given the Oscar three times.