“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.
A blatant satire overwhelms the finale. On reporting to St. Peter, Slim is confused by the state of hell, which is a ringer for Dixie. Annoyed with Slim’s naïveté, St. Peter returns him to earth because he’s “a leetle too dumb” for heaven. The poet’s control of tone, pacing, and humor allies the folksy ballad stanza with the fool tale, a popular form dating to ancient times. Composed in jouncy sermon rhythms, vivid scenes of the afterlife epitomize earth-bound evils to prove that human misbehavior condemns the racist, drinker, gambler, and womanizer.
In 1939, Brown made a turnabout from his light hearted narratives with a spiteful vendetta entitled “Bitter Fruit of the Tree.” Speaking of family suffering borne by grandmother, grandfather, and father, the central voice recites the familiar injunction to avoid bitterness. Carefully couched in pseudo-courtesy, the admonition rings hollow when balanced against hateful hardships: loss of relatives to slavery, violence, and oppression and the ongoing exploitation of sharecroppers. No longer the jaunty composer of ballad stanzas, Brown grinds deep the black resentment with explosive p sounds and hurtful b sounds.
