Four decades ago, Glynn Turman watched August Wilson s
Ma Rainey s Black Bottom on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. I was thinking, man, I sure would love to do Levee, he tells
Esquire down the phone in early December.
He never did get to play Levee, the mercurial trumpeter at the heart of the play: a story of a jazz band recording with the legendary (and eponymous) mother of the blues. The late Chadwick Boseman beat him to it for a film adaptation that s coming to Netflix this week. Instead, Turman is the band s cosmically minded elder statesman and pianist Toledo, who he played during a stage run in 2016.