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

Traynor in all his wealth and fame (in the words of Thornton's song) appears to be "high class," and he attempts to share this status with Gracie Mae, buying her cars and houses and appliances and more, but as the song says, she "see[s] through that" and "know[s he] ain't no real cool cat." She says no thank you to his lifestyle. She appreciates a brand new Cadillac and wouldn't mind waking up to homemade cornbread every morning, but as for a house with a kitchen with five stoves and a long hike to the porch and people she doesn't even know all around her, she says thanks but no thanks (16-17).

In signifying on the song and story of Big Mama Thornton, Elvis Presley, and "Hound Dog," Walker's crucial "difference" comes in the fact that Traynor seeks to understand the meaning of the song he sings by pursuing his relationship with its creator. A clue to Walker's interest in Elvis and to the significance of her fictional development of the relationship between Traynor and Gracie Mae in "Nineteen Fifty-five" appears in her fourth novel, The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Here Ola (an Olinkan man) and Fanny Nzingha (his African American daughter) discuss Ola's ideas for a play about Elvis Presley. Ola clearly perceives Elvis to be Native American in aspects of his dress (buckskin, fringe, silver) and in aspects of his appearance (thick black hair, full lips), and culturally just "as black as the other white people in Mississippi." Ola and Fannie imagine Elvis's little bump and grind as originally a movement of the circle dance, and his hiccupy singing style as once a war whoop or an Indian love call. Ola listens to Elvis "to hear where commercial and mainstream cultural success takes people, a part of whose lineage is hidden even from themselves, in a country that insists on racial, cultural and historical amnesia, if you wake up one century and find yourself 'white.'" Ola says: "in [Elvis] white Americans found a reason to express their longing and appreciation for the repressed Native American and Black parts of themselves" (188). Ola suggests that the weeping of white maidens over Elvis's death is white America's weeping over the loss of "the other" both within themselves and without (189).

Indeed, in the character of Traynor, Walker herself explores questions of success and identity, using the image and story of Elvis Presley as a vehicle. Ola's comments in Temple suggest that part of Traynor's attraction to Gracie Mae and his search for the meaning of her song is his longing for the lost African American parts of himself which are embodied in his "Loosianna creole" features (4), while part of his audience's hungry adulation is white America's longing for the cut-off and repressed African American part of themselves.

In "Nineteen Fifty-five," as in Temple, Walker explores the idea that "human beings want, above all else, to love each other freely regardless of tribe" (189) and recognizes musicians' efforts to bridge the gap. In Temple, for example, through the character of Miss Lissie, Walker acknowledges the efforts of Janis Joplin, whose immediate musical "momma" was also Big Mama Thornton. ("Their" song was "Ball 'n' Chain.") Miss Lissie says: "She knew Bessie Smith was her momma, and she sang her guts out trying to tear open that closed door between them" (369). In "Nineteen Fifty-five," Walker similarly uses this mother/child image to describe the relationship which develops between Gracie Mae and Traynor (7-8, 18). In pursuing the meaning of Gracie Mae's song through developing a relationship with its creator, Traynor begins to know himself as he begins to know Gracie Mae.