Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Act I

Reading Check

1. Sturdyvant’s attitude toward Ma Rainey is exasperated and critical. (Act I)

2. Levee plans to sell his original songs to Sturdyvant. (Act I)

3. Levee and the others argue over which version of the song they should rehearse. (Act I)

4. Levee says Toledo’s brogans make him look like a sharecropper. (Act I)

5. Toledo can read. (Act I)

6. Levee believes God went to sleep. (Act I)

7. Levee identifies with the Devil. (Act I)

8. Cutler accuses Levee of blasphemy. (Act I)

9. Ma is late to the recording session. (Act I)

10. Ma does not like Levee’s version of “Black Bottom.” (Act I)

Short Answer

1. When Levee calls the band’s music “jug-band,” he means it is primitive or unskilled. (Act I)

2. Toledo means Slow Drag is calling upon his history with Cutler to convince him to share the reefer. To call Slow Drag “African” is to suggest a disconnection between African and African American men. (Act I)

3. Toledo says that when Black men look to white men for approval, Black men will never find out who they really are. (Act I)

4. Toledo says that Black people are more concerned with having fun than with making the world better for future generations. (Act I)

5. According to Toledo, Black men collectively need to “solve the Black man’s problem.” (Act I)

6. Irvin bribes the police officer to drop the charges against Ma and Sylvester. (Act I)

7. The band speaks about Ma with respect, but they speak about other women as sexual objects. (Act I)

8. Toledo suggests that Black people are the unwanted leftovers of history who, after “filling the white man’s belly,” are not needed. (Act I)

9. Levee’s mother was raped by a group of white men, and his father was lynched for killing some of the rapists. (Act II)

10. As Act I ends, Slow Drag wishes he could burn down the recording studio. (Act I)

Act II

Reading Check

1. Sylvester struggles with his part in “Black Bottom” because he stutters. (Act II)

2. Ma requests a Coke, which further stalls the recording session. (Act II)

3. Ma asks Cutler to fire and replace Levee. (Act II)

4. Dussie Mae and Levee have started a romantic relationship. (Act II)

5. Dussie Mae and Ma are romantically involved. (Act II)

6. During the first recording of “Black Bottom,” something goes wrong with the equipment and the song isn’t recorded. (Act II)

7. Toledo says he’s never been the same fool twice. (Act II)

8. Toledo’s wife leaves him when she starts going to church and realizes he is a heathen. (Act II)

9. Cutler and Levee fight over Levee’s insults toward God. (Act II)

10. Levee threatens Cutler with a knife. (Act II)

Short Answer

1. Ma says she taught Bessie Smith and that each woman has her own following. (Act II)

2. Ma says white people will use her as long as they have personal benefit. When that benefit ends, Ma isn’t worth anything to them. (Act II)

3. Ma describes the blues as a means for understanding life. (Act II)

4. Ma is known as the Mother of the Blues, according to Toledo, because she fills up empty spaces with her voice. (Act II)

5. Toledo says that Black people are never satisfied. Levee says there isn’t any satisfaction in the scraps that white people throw Black people. (Act II)

6. Toledo suggests that Black people sold their souls to the Devil when they gave up Africa and started trying to imitate white people. (Act II)

7. Cutler notes that Ma has a degree of fame amongst Black people, but she still can’t get a cab as a Black woman. (Act II)

8. Ma encourages Sturdyvant to pay Sylvester by refusing to sign release papers and threatening to never record with him again. (Act II)

9. Sturdyvant offers Levee $5 per song but no recording deal. (Act II)

10. Levee attacks and kills Toledo because Toledo steps on Levee’s shoes. (Act II)