The Ways of White Folks and ‘‘The Blues I'm Playing'' established Hughes' s reputation as a short story writer on its publication. He was already known as a poet, having gained celebrity with several publications in the 1920s, during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement fostered by black artists and intellectuals. His short fiction, like the poems that preceded it, were—in context— daring and controversial. While many readers acclaimed his work for its beauty and directness, others—many of them leading black intellectuals of the day—complained that he put on display the "lowest'' and most stereotypical aspects of black life. Some of these readers, like Mrs. Ellsworth in ‘‘The Blues I'm Playing’’, considered art something that should rise above race and everyday life—a view that Hughes attacks in his story. But Hughes saw himself as presenting the beauty inherent in the lives of black Americans.

When Langston Hughes published The Ways of White Folks in 1934, he was already known for the poetry he had published in the 1920s. While most readers had praised his verse, many leaders of the black community criticized the young author, drawing him into a heated debate about art and race relations. Hughes' s poetry, because it drew its language from black dialect and drew its rhythms from jazz and blues, failed to adhere to the conventions of Western art. To many black intellectuals, proving their facility with these conventions was central to the project of the Harlem Renaissance; dialect was a caricature, an insult to the black community. Despite many positive reviews, the 1934 volume of short stories revived this criticism because most of the stories explicitly took as their subject matter the ordinary people who lived in neighborhoods like Harlem. Rather than setting up a new black hero for white Americans to see, these critics charged, Hughes was putting the community's worst and most stereotypical elements on display. ‘‘The Blues I'm Playing’’ captures Hughes's response to these critics. In the face of Mrs. Ellsworth's distaste, Oceola embraces her community in its everyday life. Like Hughes, she insists on its value and beauty, and she will not cooperate with the effort to erase African-American history and culture.

As these concerns about Hughes's work in general drew less attention, critics began to focus interpretation on particular elements in "The Blues I' m Playing'': the function of music, the function of sexuality, and the function of racism and racial identity. For the most part, critics have agreed in their assessments. Studies of the presence of jazz and blues in the story note not just its centrality, but also the meaning that music takes on—its evocation of the earth and the body and, consequently, of life. It is, through these same associations, also fundamental to the element of sexuality in the story. Critics agree that"The Blues I'm Playing'' charts a conflict between sexual repression and affirmation. While Oceola and Pete obviously stand for the latter, Mrs. Ellsworth sometimes appears to champion the former and at other times to be its victim. Most critics take for granted Mrs. Ellsworth's repressed sexual desire for Oceola, but some disagreement appears in analyses of her character. While Peter Bruck and Hans Ostrum, for example, portray her as essentially fearful and almost pathetic, Robert Bone and Steven Tracey stress her desire for power over Oceola, comparing her to a slave owner. All in all, however, most critics today concur in Peter Bruck's determination that this story ‘‘marks one of Hughes's outstanding achievements in this genre and established him as a serious writer of satirical short fiction.’’