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Home / Best Quotes / Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Best Quotes on Netflix

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Best Quotes on Netflix

by MovieQuotesandMore.com

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Starring: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, Taylour Paige, Dusan Brown, Jonny Coyne, Jeremy Shamos

OUR RATING: ★★★★☆

Story:

Netflix’s bio-drama directed by George C. Wolfe based on the play of the same name by August Wilson. The story is set in Chicago, 1927, during a recording session, over the course of an afternoon, as tensions rise between Ma Rainey (Viola Davis), the legendary “Mother of the Blues”, her ambitious horn player, Levee (Chadwick Boseman), and the white management determined to control her.

 

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Our Favorite Quotes:

'The more music you have in the world, the fuller it is.' - Ma Rainey (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) Click To Tweet 'The blues help you get out of bed in the morning. You get up knowing you ain't alone. There's something else in the world. Something's been added by that song. This be an empty world without the blues.' - Ma Rainey Click To Tweet 'Now death. Death got some style. Death will kick your a** and make you wish you never been born. That's how bad death is. But you can rule over life. Life ain't nothing.' - Levee (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) Click To Tweet

 

Best Quotes


 

Sturdyvant: I’m not putting up with any Royal Highness, Queen of the Blues bulls**t.
Irvin: Mother of the Blues, Mel. Mother of the Blues.


 

Toledo: [as Levee holds up his new shoes] How much you pay for something like that, Levee?
Levee: Eleven dollars. Four dollars of it belong to Cutler.
Slow Drag: Ooh! Levee say if it wasn’t for Cutler, he wouldn’t have no new shoes.
Cutler: I ain’t thinking about Levee or his shoes.


 

Levee: Damn! They done changed things around. Don’t never leave well enough alone.
Toledo: Yeah, everything changing all the time. Even the air you breathing change. Yeah, you got monoxide, hydrogen, changing all the time. Skin changing. Different molecules. Everything.
Levee: What is you talking about? I’m talking about the room. I ain’t talking about no skin and air. I’m talking about something I can see. I ain’t talking about no molecules.
Toledo: I know what you talking about. You don’t know what I’m talking about.


 

Levee: That door. You see that door? That’s what I’m talking about. The door wasn’t there before.
Cutler: Levee, you wouldn’t know your right from your left. And damn if that door wasn’t there. Now, if you’re talking about they done switched rooms, you right. But don’t go telling me that door wasn’t there.


 

Levee: I’m just saying that things change.
Toledo: What the hell do you think I was saying? Things change. The air and everything. Now you going to say you was saying it.


 

Toledo: You going to fit two propositions on the same track, run them into each other, and because they crash, you going to say it’s the same train?
Levee: Now this n**** talking about trains. We done went from the air, to the skin, to the door, and now trains. Toledo, I’d just like to be inside your head for five minutes just to see how you think. You done got more s**t piled up and mixed up in there than the devil got sinners. You been reading too many goddamn books.
Toledo: What you care about how much I read? I’m going to ignore you because you’re ignorant.


 

Levee: They need one of them jug bands for this.
Slow Drag: Don’t make no difference to me, long as we get paid.
Levee: That ain’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about art.
Slow Drag: What’s drawing got to do with it?


 

Cutler: If you want to be one of them, what you call virtuosos, or something, you’re in the wrong place. You ain’t no King Oliver, or Buddy Bolden. You’re just an old trumpet player come a dime a dozen. Talking about art.
Levee: What is you? I don’t see your name in lights.
Cutler: I just play the piece. Whatever they want. I don’t criticize other people’s music.


 

Levee: I ain’t like you, Cutler. I got talent.
Cutler: Oh, s**t.
Levee: Me and this horn, we’s tight. If my daddy had a knowed I was going to turn out like this, he would have named me Gabriel.


 

Levee: I’m going to get me a band and make me some records. I done give Mr. Sturdyvant some of my songs I wrote, and he say he going to let me record them when I get my band together. I just got to finish the last part of this song. I knows how to play real music, not this old jug band s**t. I got style.
Toledo: Oh, everybody got style. Style ain’t nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.


 

Levee: Everybody can’t play like I do. Everybody can’t have their own band.
Cutler: Well, until you get your own band where you can play what you want, just play the piece and stop complaining. I told you when you came on here, this ain’t none of them hot bands. This is an accompaniment band. You play Ma’s music when you’re here.


 

Cutler: You trying to tell me what we is and ain’t going to play, and that ain’t none of your business. Your business is to play what I say.
Levee: Oh. I see now. You done got jealous because Mr. Irvin using my version.
Cutler: What I got to be jealous of you about? The day I get jealous of you, I may as well lay down and die.


 

Levee: [after Irvin’s told them to play Levee’s version of “Black Bottom”] See, I told you! It don’t mean nothing when I say it. You got to wait for Mr. Irvin to say it. Well, I told you the way it is.
Cutler: Levee, the sooner you understand it ain’t what you say, or what Mr. Irvin say, it’s what Ma say that count.
Levee: Look, I don’t care what you play, alright? It don’t matter to me.


 

Slow Drag: Don’t nobody say when it comes to Ma. She going to do what she want to do.
Levee: Mr. Irvin the one putting out the record.
Slow Drag: He going to put out what she want him to put out.
Cutler: Levee confused about who the boss is. He don’t know Ma’s the boss.


 

Cutler: Alright, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Levee’s version.
Toledo: How that first part go again there, Lev?
Levee: It go like this.
[plays his trumpet to demonstrate]
Levee: That’s to get the people’s attention. That’s when you and Slow Drag come in with the rhythm part. Me and Cutler play on the breaks.
Cutler: The man just asked how the part go. He ain’t ask for all that.


 

Cutler: “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” A-one, a-two, a-you know what to do.


 

Levee: [as they start playing] Hey, hey, hey. Y’all got to keep up now. You playing in the wrong time.
Cutler: Will you let us play this song? We been playing before you was born. Trying to tell us how to play.


 

Levee: Slow Drag, watch them big-a** shoes you got.
Slow Drag: Ain’t nobody done nothing to you.
Levee: You done stepped on my shoes!
Slow Drag: Then move them the hell out the way then! You was in my way. I wasn’t in your way.


 

Cutler: Any man who takes a whole week’s pay and puts it on some shoes, you understand what I mean, what you walk around with on the ground with, is a fool. And I don’t mind telling him.
Levee: What difference it make to you, Cutler?


 

Levee: A man got to have some shoes to dance like this. He can’t dance like this with them clodhoppers Toledo got.
Toledo: That’s the trouble with colored folks, always looking to have a good time. More n****s have got killed trying to have a good time than God got ways to count.


 

Toledo: What the hell having a good time mean? That’s what I want to know. Got to be more to life than just having a good time. If there ain’t, then this is a pi**-poor life we’re living if that’s all there is to be got out of it.


 

Slow Drag: Good times is what makes life worth living.


 

Toledo: I know how to have a good time as well as the next man. Yeah. I just said there’s got to be more to life than just having a good time. I said, the colored man ought to be doing more than just trying to have a good time all the time.


 

Levee: You’re talking all them highfalutin ideas about making a better world for the colored man. What is you doing to make it better? You playing the music, and looking for your next piece of pu**y, same as we is. What is you doing?
Toledo: It ain’t just me, fool. I said everybody. what you think, I’m going to solve the colored man’s problem all by myself? I said “we”. You understand that? We. That’s every living colored man in the world got to do his share, got to do his part. I ain’t talking about what I’m going to do, or you going to do, or Cutler, Slow Drag, anybody else. I’m talking about what all of us going to do together.


 

Cutler: Ain’t nobody studying you.
Levee: Alright, I ain’t nobody. Don’t pay me no mind. I ain’t nobody.
Toledo: Ain’t nobody but the devil.
Levee: There you go. That’s who I am. I’m the devil. I ain’t nothing but the devil.


 

Cutler: God going to strike you down with that blasphemy you talking.
Levee: Oh, s**t. God don’t mean nothing to me. Let him strike me. Here I am, standing right here. What you talking about he going to strike me? Here I am. Let him strike me. I ain’t scared of him.
Cutler: Alright. Alright. You going to be sorry. You going to fix yourself to have bad luck. Ain’t nothing going to work out for you.


 

Levee: What I care about bad luck? You talking simple. I ain’t had nothing but bad luck all my life. Couldn’t get no worse. What the hell I care about some bad luck? Hell, I eat it every day for breakfast. You dumber than I thought you was, talking about bad luck.
Cutler: Alright, n****. You’ll see. Can’t tell a fool nothing. You’ll see.


 

Sturdyvant: [referring to Ma] She’s late and already she’s started.
Irvin: I talked to her last night. I got everything straight, Mel. You just stay out of the way. Just let me handle it.
Sturdyvant: Yeah, you handled it last time, remember? She marches in like she owns the damn place, complains about the building being cold, trips over a mic wire, then threatens to sue me.


 

Irvin: That’s what people want now, Ma. They want something they can dance to. Levee’s arrangement gives the people what they want. It makes them excited, it makes them forget about their troubles.
Ma Rainey: I don’t care what you say, honey. Levee ain’t messing up my song. Now, if he got what the people want, let him take it somewhere else. I’m singing Ma Rainey’s song, I ain’t singing no Levee’s song. Now that’s all there is to it.


 

Irvin: Me and Sturdyvant. We decided…
Ma Rainey: You decided, huh? I’m just a bump on a log. I’m just going to go whichever way the river drift. Is that it? You and Sturdyvant decided?
Irvin: No. We just thought…
Ma Rainey: I ain’t got no good sense. I know nothing about music. I don’t know what a good song is, or what ain’t. You know more about my fans than I do.
Irvin: It’s not that, Ma. It’s more of what the people want.


 

Ma Rainey: What you all say don’t count with me, you understand? Ma listen to her heart. Ma listen to the voice inside her. That’s what count with Ma.


 

Ma Rainey: [to Irvin] Levee ain’t messing up my song. Now, if that don’t set right with you and Sturdyvant, I can carry my black bottom on back down South to my tour, because I don’t like it up here noways.


 

Irvin: Okay, Ma. Have it your way, but we’ll be ready to go in fifteen minutes.
Ma Rainey: We’ll be ready to go when Madam says so. And that’s the way it go around here.

See more Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Quotes


 

Levee: I done wrote a version of that song, what picks it up and sets it down in the people’s lap, and here she come talking this. You don’t need that old circus bulls**t. I know what I’m talking about. You going to mess up the song, Cutler, and you know it!
Cutler: I ain’t going to mess up nothing. Ma say…
Levee: I don’t care what Ma say! I’m talking about what the intro going to do to the song. The peoples in the North ain’t going to go for that old tent-show nonsense. They want to hear some music.


 

Cutler: I done told you time and again. Ma say what to play, not you. You ain’t here to be doing no creating. You play whatever Ma say.
Levee: I might not play nothing. I might just quit.
Cutler: N****, don’t nobody care if you quit. Whose heart you going to break?
Toledo: Levee ain’t going to quit. He need to make money to keep him in shoe polish.
[they laugh]
Levee: I done told y’all you don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ll do.


 

Cutler: Sylvester, look here. The band plays the intro, and then you say, “Alright, boys, you done seen the rest. Now I’m going to show you the best. Ma Rainey’s going to show you her black bottom.”


 

Levee: I ain’t rehearsing nothing. Just wait till I get my band together. I’m going to record that song and show you how it’s supposed to go.


 

Toledo: Yeah, well, Levee can’t help it none. He’s spooked up by the white man. Ain’t had time to study them.
Levee: I studies the white man, I got him studied good. The first time one fixes on me wrong, I’m going to show him just how much I study. Come tell me I’m spooked up by the white man. You let one mess with me, I’ll show you how spooked up I am.


 

Levee: Levee got to be Levee! And he don’t need nobody messing with him about the white man! Because you don’t know nothing about me. You don’t know Levee. You don’t know nothing about what kind of blood I got, what kind of a heart I got beating here!


 

Levee: My daddy wasn’t spooked up by the white man. No, sir. And that taught me how to handle them. I seen my daddy go up and grin in this cracker’s face. Smile in his face and sell him his land. All the while, he’s planning how he’s going to get him, and what he’s going to do to him. That taught me how to handle them. So you all just back up and leave Levee alone about the white man. I can smile and say “yes, sir” to whoever I please. I got my time coming to me. You all just leave Levee alone about the white man.


 

Toledo: Everybody come from different places in Africa, right? Different tribes and things. Soon awhile they began to make one big stew. You had your carrots, and your peas, and your potatoes over here. And over there, you had your meat, and nuts, okra, corn. And you mix it up, cook it real good to where the flavors flow through. And then you got one thing. You got a stew. Now you take and you eat that stew. You take and you make your history with that stew. But you look around and you see some carrots over there, and some peas over here. And that stew is still there. You done made your history, and it’s still there. You can’t eat it all. So what you got? You got some leftovers. That’s what it is. See, we is the leftovers. The colored man, he is the leftovers.


 

Toledo: What’s the colored man going to do with himself? That’s what we’re waiting to find out. But first he’s got to know that he’s a leftover.


 

Ma Rainey: What’s all this s**t about “the boys in the band said”? I tells you what to do. I says what the matter is with the band. I say who can and can’t do what.
Cutler: [referring to Sylvester] We just say because the boy stutter.
Ma Rainey: I know he stutters. Don’t you think I know he stutters? This is what going to help him.
Cutler: We just thought it’d be easier…
Ma Rainey: He going to do the part. And I don’t want to hear any more of this s**t about what the boys in the band says.


 

Ma Rainey: Levee ain’t nothing but trouble.
Cutler: Levee alright. He plays good music when he puts his mind to it. He know how to write music too.
Ma Rainey: I don’t care what he know. He ain’t nothing but bad news. Find somebody else. He the ringtail leader. I know it was his idea who to say who can do what.


 

Levee: A man what’s going to get his own band need to have a woman like you.
Dussie Mae: A woman like me need a man to bring it and put it in my hand. I don’t need nobody getting something for nothing and leave me standing in my door.
Levee: That ain’t Levee’s style, sugar. I knows how to treat a woman. Buy her presents and things. Treat her like she want to be treated.
Dussie Mae: That’s what they all say till it come time to be buying the presents.


 

Ma Rainey: I’ve been doing this a long time. Ever since I was a little girl. I don’t care what nobody else do.


 

Ma Rainey: They don’t care nothing about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that. And they going to treat me the way I want to be treated no matter how much it hurt them.


 

Ma Rainey: They back there right now calling me all kinds of names. Calling me everything but a child of God. But they can’t do nothing else because they ain’t got what they wanted yet. As soon as they get my voice down on one them recording machines, then it’s just like I’d be some wh**e, and they roll over and put their pants on. They ain’t got no use for me then. I know what I’m talking about. You watch.


 

Dussie Mae: You get your own band, we’ll see about this stuff you talking.
Levee: I just want to show you I knows what the womens like. They don’t call me Sweet Lemonade for nothing.
Dussie Mae: Stop it now. Somebody going to come in here.
Levee: No, they ain’t. Look here, sugar. What I wants to know is, can I introduce my red rooster to your brown hen.
[they start kissing]
Dussie Mae: You get your own band and we’ll see if your red rooster know how to crow.


 

Ma Rainey: Sure done got quiet in here. I never could stand no silence. I always got to have some music going on in my head somewhere. It keeps things balanced. Music will do that. It fills things up. The more music you have in the world, the fuller it is.


 

Ma Rainey: White folk don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing because that’s a way of understanding life.


 

Ma Rainey: The blues help you get out of bed in the morning. You get up knowing you ain’t alone. There’s something else in the world. Something’s been added by that song. This be an empty world without the blues. I try to take that emptiness and fill it up with something.


 

Ma Rainey: I ain’t started blues way of singing. Blues always been there. But if they want to call me the Mother of Blues, that’s alright with me. It don’t hurt none.


 

Irvin: Listen, Ma. These records are going to be hits. They are going to sell like crazy. Hell, even Sylvester will be a star. Fifteen minutes. That is all I am asking, Ma. Just fifteen minutes.
Ma Rainey: Fifteen minutes. You hear me, Irvin? Fifteen minutes. Then I’m going to carry my black bottom on back down to Georgia, you hear me? Fifteen minutes.


 

Toledo: Some mens got it worse than others. Some mens is excited to be a fool. I knows about it. The excitement is something else. I done experienced it. Make you feel good to be a fool. But it don’t last long. Over in a minute, then you got to tend with the consequences.
Levee: That’s the best sense you made all day, talking about being a fool. That’s the only sensible thing you said today, admitting you was a fool.
Toledo: Oh, I admits it, alright. Ain’t nothing wrong with it. I done been a little bit of everything. Going to be a bit more things before I’m finished with it. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice. That’s where we part ways.
Levee: But you been a fool. That’s what counts.


 

Cutler: Toledo, what you call a fool, and what I call a fool, are two different things. A fool is responsible for what happen to him. A fool cause it to happen. Like Levee. He keep messing around with Ma’s gal, and his feet be out there scraping the ground. That’s a fool.
Levee: There ain’t nothing going to happen to Levee. Levee ain’t going to let nothing happen to him.


 

Cutler: Toledo, all I’m saying is, from the looks of it, from your story, I don’t think life treated you fair.
Toledo: Oh, life’s fair.
Levee: Life ain’t s**t! You can put it in a paper bag and carry it around with you. It ain’t got no balls. Now death. Death got some style. Death will kick your a** and make you wish you never been born. That’s how bad death is. But you can rule over life. Life ain’t nothing.


 

Levee: Is you going to be satisfied with a bone somebody done throwed you when you done seen them eating a whole hog?
Toledo: You lucky they let you be an entertainer. You’re lucky and don’t even know it.
Levee: I’m talking about being satisfied with a bone somebody done throwed you. That’s what’s the matter with y’all, you’re satisfied sitting in one place.


 

Levee: Soon as I get my band together, and record them songs Mr. Sturdyvant done told me I can make, I’m going to be like Ma, and tell the white man just what he can do. Ma tell Mr. Irvin she leaving? Mr. Irvin get down on his knees and beg her to stay. That’s the way I’m going to be. Make the white man respect me.


 

Cutler: The white man don’t care nothing about Ma. The colored folks made Ma a star. The white folks don’t care nothing about who she is, or what kind of music she make.
Slow Drag: Let her go to one of them white folks hotel and see how big she is.
Cutler: Hell, she can’t even get a cab up here in the North.


 

Ma Rainey: Levee, what were you doing? Why you playing all them notes? You’re playing ten notes for every one you supposed to play. It don’t call for all that.
Levee: You’re supposed to improvise on the theme. That’s what I was doing.
Ma Rainey: You’re supposed to play the song like I sing it. The way everybody else play it.
Levee: I was playing the song the way I felt it.


 

Ma Rainey: I’m trying to sing my song and you messing up my ear. You call that playing music?
Levee: Hey, I know what I’m doing. Y’all back up and leave me alone about my music.
Cutler: I done told you it ain’t about your music. It’s about Ma’s music.


 

Ma Rainey: Cutler, Levee’s out. He ain’t playing in my band no more.
Levee: I’m fired? Good! Best thing that ever happened to me! I don’t need this s**t.


 

Levee: Mr. Sturdyvant, sir? About them songs I give you?
Sturdyvant: Oh, yeah. Oh, Levee. I thought about it. I just don’t think that people will buy them. They’re not the type of songs we’re looking for.


 

Levee: Mr. Sturdyvant, sir. I done already got my band picked out. I got some real good fellas. They know how to play real good music. I know if the peoples hear the music, they’ll buy it.
Sturdyvant: Levee, I’ll be fair with you. They’re just not the right songs.


 

Levee: [after Sturdyvant’s rejection] Look at that. That’s my shoe. You did it. You did it! You f***ed up my shoe. You stepped on my shoe with them raggedy-a** clodhoppers.
Toledo: Ain’t nobody studying about you and your shoe. I said, “Excuse me.” If you can’t accept that, then the hell with it. What you want me to do?
Levee: You stepped on my shoe.
[suddenly he stabs Toledo in the back]


 

Levee: [Cutler and Slow Drag look on in horror as Toledo dies] He stepped on my shoe. He did. Honest. Cutler, he stepped on my shoe. What he do that for? Toledo, what you do that for? Cutler, help. He stepped on my shoe. Cutler! It’s okay, Toledo. I’ll help you. Come on, Toledo.


 

Levee: [as he rocks Toledo’s body in his arm] Oh, no. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t look at me like that.


 

What do you think of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom quotes? Let us know what you think in the comments below as we’d love to know.

 

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  1. Colleen Conaway says

    April 25, 2021 at 4:41 pm

    Thank you for these great quotes. I especially liked the ones about music and the blues. This one: “The more music you have in the world, the fuller it is.” “The blues help you get out of bed in the morning. ….” — You have quoted an amazing amount of dialogue that share the life views of the characters but also their desires, heartaches. Wonderful.

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