paula west’s blues
When Paula West steps onto a stage, it’s as if she’s sneaking up on the spotlight. Inside the SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium, West was the last of three vocalists performing one night this spring. Patiently weaving her way around pianist Tammy Hall and stepping past a seated Angela Davis, the petite singer finally settled at the microphone. West doesn’t do grand entrances, but you feel her presence.
The sold-out event was part of a four-night residency put together by bassist-composer Marcus Shelby. This evening was a tribute to Davis, the legendary writer and political activist, with a program centered on her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. In it, Davis argues that early blues songs of genre giants Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday represented an emerging “black feminist consciousness.” Onstage, Davis referred to a section of the book in which she examines explicit imagery in Rainey’s “Prove It on Me Blues” that “flaunts” a subversive reality of sexual independence. Vocalist Kim Nalley then sang Rainey’s lyrics, backed by an onstage quartet. Besides Shelby, all were black women.
West, however, took a different path. Her first songs that night weren’t associated with the icons Davis names in her book. Instead, West began with Irving Berlin’s tragic ballad “Suppertime,” which was originally sung by pioneering black singer and actress Ethel Waters in the 1933 Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer.
Before launching into it, West unfolded the song’s backstory for the audience. “Suppertime” portrays a woman reacting to the news of her husband’s lynching while setting the dinner table for a meal he’ll never come home to. As West began, Davis looked up from her notes and over at the slight singer, a tight, knowing smile creasing her
