"Ma Rainey," a four-part literary portrait published in 1932, characterizes the delight of fans who flock to hear vaudeville singer Gertrude Malissa Rainey, mistress of "Backwater Blues." One of the rural and small-town South's favorites, she pours out bright humor to the beat of Long Boy's piano accompaniment. Her engaging humor dispels the audience's "aches an' miseries." The poem opens on two-beat lines of irregular iambics rhyming alternate lines with town/aroun', Bluff/stuff, and mules/fools. Section II slows the pace with seven-beat lines as the viewers take seats and focus on her "gold-toofed smiles." Revving up short lines in Part III, the speaker appreciates the singer's ability to strengthen spots "way inside us" and to assuage the hurt of "hard luck" on "de lonesome road." Candidly stage-struck at Ma's emotive power, the final segment cites one of her songs and an anonymous listener's gratitude that "she jes' gits hold of us dataway."
From the same collection, "Slim in Hell" captures another memorable character from the black experience. A folk figure who escapes death, Slim Greer roams outside heaven to spy on hell. The freedom goes to his head. Like a rambunctious "Lucky Lindy," the nickname of pilot hero Charles Lindbergh, Slim sails back to earth. In part two, no longer winged, he receives the devil's permission to observe the wicked doings in hell. Amid Memphis gamblers and New Orleans high-timers, Slim recognizes sinful ministers, booze runners, and white imps who stoke hell's furnace with their black counterparts. The devil, transformed into a redneck sheriff, terrorizes Slim, who clips on his wings and flees back to heaven.
