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

Like Walker's title, dedication, and epigraph, the lyrics of Lillian Miller's song reflect the essence of the theme which unites the stories in Walker's volume. The collection shows African American women whose spirits will not be crushed, "good women" who will not be kept down and who when thrown down rise up again in some other town. They are women who struggle and suffer a great deal, who are oppressed but not defeated; women who command respect and reject the mistreatment of men. Like the blues people alluded to in Walker's dedication, they insist "on the value and beauty of the authentic"; they insist on the value and beauty of themselves; they insist on being themselves, and they demand that their needs be accommodated.

In "Nineteen Fifty-five," Walker, too, insists on the value and beauty of blues women and "authentic"(3) blues music, celebrating the vitality of African American expressive culture and the resilient creative spirit of the Black woman blues artist. Told from the blues woman's perspective in first-person narration, "Nineteen Fifty-five" "grounds" the stories in the volume, encapsulating and projecting the essence of the theme which unites them in the colorful and eloquent language and voice of the blues woman narrator. As in Hurston's Their Eyes, Walker, in "Nineteen Fifty-five," sings the blues and tells the story of the blues through a blues woman who sings and tells her own story. In signifying on the songs and stories of Bradford, Miller, Hurston, and Thornton, Walker celebrates and gives voice to the tradition both by recording it and passing it on, and by creating her own personal expression within it.

The story "Nineteen Fifty-five" documents the relationship between Gracie Mae Still, a veteran blues composer and singer, and Traynor, a young, white, soon-to-be-rich rock 'n' roll star. Traynor's fame and fortune rest on the success of his "cover" recording in 1955-56 of a Gracie Mae Still composition dating back to 1923. Gracie Mae's narrative follows their relationship, through visits, correspondence, and television performances, from the day Traynor comes to ask for Gracie Mae's permission to record the song in 1955 to the day of Traynor's death in 1977. Traynor, "blessed" with fame and fortune but plagued by an emptiness and confusion in both his professional and personal lives, is drawn to the Black female creator of his first hit record, as he is to her song, in his search for "authenticity" and meaning.

The relationship between Gracie Mae and Traynor develops as Traynor struggles to understand the song which has made him famous. The song and the composer become the vehicles through which he seeks meaning in his life. Although he is a tragic figure, unable ever to find himself or to find meaning in his life, Traynor comes to understand a great deal about his own unhappiness from his association with Gracie Mae. Walker's story demonstrates the truth of Herman Hesse's statement, given in her epigraph, that "it is harder to kill something that is spiritually alive" (Gracie Mae) "than it is to bring the dead back to life" (Traynor).