Bessie Smith’s recording of Ma Rainey’s “Bad Luck Blues” is an example of the lives of women during the time of the “Blues Divas”.  In Angela Davis’s Mama’s Got the Blues, she writes that “the most frequently recurring themes of women’s blues music revolve around male lovers and the plethora of problems posed by heterosexual relationships… (Davis 45)”. Bad Luck Blues is no different where the male lover has done something and right after, there are problems that the woman goes through.

The song is told from first person and there are two instruments used: the piano and the saxophone. Apart from the beginning, the saxophone plays after every line of Smith. It is used in the beginning before the actual singing to build a mood of sadness as Smith relays the problems she has had; problems that would make others sad. After every line, the saxophone seems to emphasize softer tones to build-up on the sadness of the lyrics. For example with the lyric “With your arms around the pillow where your daddy used to lay” the saxophone never goes into a high pitch of noise but instead is played at a lower, softer pitch. The saxophone is playing at a softer tone because that line reveals the source of her news. The beginning lines were about announcing her news to the people who will listen and the source of her sadness is her daddy missing. Her lover (aka daddy) disappeared sometime at the break of dawn and is seemingly never coming back to her ever again. In contrast to the saxophone, the piano is played throughout the entire song and is played with a more upbeat melody. One might say the upbeat piano is giving Smith the strength to be able to talk about what has happened to her.

There are many different reasons why someone would be motivated to express themselves in this song. Given the lyrics “Hey people, listen while I spread my news/ I wanna tell you people all about my bad luck blues” she wants someone to listen to what has happened to her. She even wishes to make God part of her audience requesting him to find the whereabouts of her man and to find what she has done in all the time she has spent with her man. Smith could also be cautioning women to keep an eye on their male lovers in case he decides to leave just like Smith’s man. No one knows when a man might leave: “Did you ever wake up just at the break of day” showing that a man will wait until you have fallen well into slumber before leaving you. You won’t even find out when even when you get awoken at daybreak. The last three lines of the song gives an interesting notion of the power in heterosexual relationships.

The last three lines of the song are “What’s the use of living if you can’t get the man you love/ The use of living if you can’t get the man you love/ You might as well go die, give your soul to the Maker above” showing that without a man, the singer doesn’t want to live anymore. It seems as though her life is incomplete without her man by her side; and death is the only solution to this problem. The Blues Divas have plenty of songs with the main subject concerning that men are the important things in their lives. In Davis’s article, she describes the song “My Man Blues”, where both Bessie Smith and Clara Smith sing about “competition for the attention of a man who each woman insists belongs to her (Davis 51)”. She writes that the song also has resonances about “the rivalry in general between women (Davis 51)”. Possibly back in the day, a good man was really hard to find and that is why women fight over having the power to possess the man all to themselves.

The song is full of sadness given the way Smith stresses words such as blues and love and even Lord where at that point it’s like she is crying to the heavens. It does give an underlying tone of personal strength and perseverance with the upbeat piano and even the lines about preferable death instead of living. The line states “might as well go die” but the might restrains death and instead tells one to keep on living.