Tell you something, Irvin, and you can go up there and you can tell Sturdyvant, too. 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. Now you carry my nephew on down there, you tell Cutler he gonna do the voice intro to the Black Bottom song, and 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 ‘cause I don’t like it up here noways.

—Viola Davis plays Ma Rainey in the film of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.