"You Just Can't Keep a Good Woman Down": Alice Walker sings the blues

Gracie Mae contrasts her own spiritual approach with "good voices occupying body space," which, in its use of objectification, alludes to Traynor's somethingness and material approach. As is clear from Gracie Mae's description of his performance, Traynor is still copying Gracie Mae, as he was in 1956: "side streets, avenues, red lights, train crossings and all" (7). In 1968 he copies himself in 1956 copying Gracie Mae in 1923. He does nothing musically to make it his own song. He is not enjoying himself, nor is he present with the music in the moment. In his contempt for his audience and for himself and in his disgust with the audience's response, he forgets a couple of lines of the song.

By juxtaposing the two performances, Walker also illuminates several levels of contrast in the audience/performer dynamics. On the one hand, the audience responds to Traynor with the same "matronly squeals" as in 1956, but shows little interest in Gracie Mae. On the other hand, while the audience claps politely for about two seconds for Gracie Mae, Traynor stands and claps and claps and beams at Gracie Mae and at the audience "like [she] his mama for true" (18). The reactions of Gracie Mae and Traynor to their audience's responses are also vastly different. When Traynor gives Gracie Mae a hug, the audience laughs, responding to the contrast in appearance between the two. Gracie Mae smiles, acknowledging the comical aspect of the moment, while Traynor gets mad. Traynor again becomes angry and disgusted at the audience's responses to the two performances and feels defeated, whereas Gracie Mae, undaunted by the audience, consoles Traynor as a mother would a child.

In sum, Traynor concerns himself with the responses of an audience of people he feels contempt for but does not know; he surrounds himself regularly with people he cares little for and does not know. He eats and sleeps with people he does not know - including his wife. In contrast, Gracie Mae surrounds herself with the people she loves and knows, trying only to make the people she knows and cares about happy. She concerns herself with pleasing her audience insofar as they are people she "knows." Pleasing them means singing out of her own experience, insisting on the value and beauty of her own experience and her own voice, and pleasing herself first. Gracie Mae's audience was small, it was honest, it was intimate. Like Ma Rainey, she "really knew these people" (Lieb 17). And they responded to the truth she put out, which resonated their own experience. Her singing "made the dirt farmers cry like babies and the womens shout Honey, hush!" (6). In contrast, Traynor's audience is huge, dishonest, and undiscriminating, "on him like white on rice" (9).

As I suggested at the beginning of this essay, Alice Walker's fictional character Traynor bears a clear relationship to the real-life figure Elvis Presley. In her characterization of Traynor, Walker "repeats" many aspects of Presley's appearance and career, including the following.(4) Presley began recording in 1954, just out of high school. By 1956, his records were reaching number one on the pop charts, and he was fast becoming a wealthy man. While still a young man he was hailed as "The King of Rock 'n' Roll."(5) He also made numerous movies and television appearances. He was drafted into the army in March 1958, served much of his time in Germany, and was discharged in March 1960. He was known to give generous gifts - cars, televisions, diamond rings - to family members, friends, fans, and acquaintances. He was also known to travel with his entourage in a fleet of Cadillacs which were always on hand. It was the "wiggle" movement "Elvis the Pelvis" made with his hips in those first performances of fast R & B numbers that led the young white women and girls to scream and shout for more. He was married, divorced, and had numerous short-lived relationships with women. He gained a great deal of weight in his later years, tipping the scales at 250 pounds in August 1977 when he died of heart failure related to drug use at the age of 42.