Venice ’25: Newport & the Great Folk Dream

It was home to stately mansions, like Seaview Terrace (used for exterior shots on Dark Shadows). However, in 1954 the Rhode Island city started attracting hip young visitors when it first hosted the Newport Jazz Festival. George Wein’s Festival Productions diversified with the Newport Folk Festival, which was even less elitist than the jazz festival—or so you would think. The folkies were decidedly lefty in their politics, but some had very strict notions as to what constituted proper folk music—and you’d better believe it was acoustic. This musical bias would be sorely tested in the early 1960s. As it happened, documentarian Murray Lerner shot a wealth of footage of the 1963-1966 Newport Folk Festivals, out of which only a fraction was seen in his film simply titled Festival. Highlights from that unseen treasure trove finally see the light of day in Robert Gordon’s Newport & the Great Folk Dream, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

If you know anything about Bob Dylan, you know the film is building up to the fireworks of the 1965 fest, when Dylan “went electric.” Lerner also produced a later documentary about that pivotal moment. In the early years, most of the angst focused on politics, particularly the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, the Newport Folk Festival offered a rare opportunity for social and cultural interaction between white hill country musicians and black blues and gospel artists.

Wisely, one of the primary [disembodied] interview voices is the of Joe Boyd (author of White Bicycles), who was Wein’s blues producer. He fondly remembers walking through the so-called “Blues House,” where the likes of Skip James and Son House performing informally in each room. Yet, he also hints at the Festival’s deep ideological divide when he recalls board members Alan Lomax and Theodore Bikel would be periodically act scandalized by the professional-grade sound-checks he provided for the performers, because it clashed with their paternalistic, noble-savage-idealizing conception of folk music.

Indeed, it is fascinating to see the kind of authenticity debate in folk that somewhat parallels criticism of Wynton Marsalis’s jazz gate-keeping in the 1990s, except the folk purists were probably more vehement. Regardless, the stacked line-up of blues legends truly blows the mind: James, House, Mississippi John Hurt, Jesse Fuller, John Lee Hooker, Fred & Annie McDowell, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and (controversially at the time) the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (because they were “electric”).

Sinners: Buddy Guy’s Box-Office Blockbuster

There is a long history of blues musicians confronting supernatural evil. In this case, vampires replace hellhounds, but they certainly follow an accepted uncanny blues precedent. Fittingly, it takes place in storied Clarksdale, Mississippi, where two notorious former bootlegging twin brothers have returned to open a juke joint. Unfortunately, a vampire also comes to town in director-screenwriter Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which is still playing in theaters.

Even though they have been gone for seven years, half of Clarksdale still remembers the identical “Smokestack” twins, Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elais “Stack” Moore—the black half. The town’s severe racial divide is only bridged by Bo and Grace Chow, who operate general stores on both sides of the main street.

The Smokestacks intend to open a new juke, so they recruit crusty old bluesman Delta Slim and their young up-and-coming guitarist cousin Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore to supply the entertainment. However, there is sure to be trouble since Stack’s biracial-but-passing ex, Mary is coming. So will Pearline, an inconveniently married vocalist, who has been giving Preacher Boy the eye.

However, the real trouble comes when Remmick, an old Celtic vampire, and a recently-turned former KKK married couple try to crash the party. Wisely, the Smokestacks are reluctant to invite in freaky white weirdos, but the vampires can be very persuasive and deceptive. Smoke’s ex-wife Annie might also have some insight into the evil lurking outside, as a hoodoo practitioner.

Eventually, the great Buddy Guy plays an important part in this tale, but it would spoilery to explain how. Regardless, it is safe to say his role plays to his strengths and it some ways serves as a glorious capstone to his legendary career. It should be noted his main appearance comes soon after the closing credits start—and it is a scene that holds great significance to the film’s narrative. (There is also a post-credits stinger that is worth sticking around for, but does not impact the storyline to any degree.)

Frankly, Buddy Guy deserves to have his name above the title. That said, Michael B. Jordan’s already considerable star-power raises even higher with his tour-de-force performance as the Smokestack Twins. He is all kinds of fierce and dangerously charismatic. It is an unusually accomplished and memorable portrayals of twins, even though the Smokestacks are not as sharply differentiated as the twins played by Theo James in The Monkey or Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringer—but he is still at that level.

Yet, perhaps the cast-member most deserving an awards campaign might be Delroy Lindo for his understated but still scene-stealing work as Delta Slim. He channels decades of blues lore, while getting most of the film’s laughs with Slim’s dry—yet well-lubricated, if you know what I mean—wit.

Another virtue that sets Sinners apart is the wealth of fully developed supporting characters—at least a dozen’s worth. Li Yun Li and Yao are definitely two standouts as the Chows, who turn out to be much more than convenient devices to travel between Clarksdale’s segregated halves. Plus, Jack O’Connell brings the bravura flamboyance of his Rogue Heroes character, but he manifests it in a much more sinister manner as the vampire Remmick.

Bonnie Blue: James Cotton’s Life in the Blues

James Cotton survived getting shot five times during an altercation. To this day, his friends are not quite sure why it happened, but they hypothesize a woman might have partially been the cause. You can’t get much more blues than that. Even more importantly, he played a mouth harp (harmonica) in a manner they liken to a roaring freight train. Cotton’s colleagues and admirers look back on his life and music in Bestor Cram’s documentary Bonnie Blue: James Cotton’s Life in the Blues, which releases this Friday on VOD.

Cotton’s first gig dates back to his childhood on the Bonnie Blue plantation, where he sang and played to entertain workers on their water breaks. Indeed, his life was the blues. He was mentored by Sonny Boy Williamson II, a.k.a. Rice Miller, a.k.a. many other names, but he really came to prominence as a member of Muddy Waters band.

Cotton’s career really took off during the Blus revival. As his fellow musicians explain, his hard-charging style made him the harpist who most appealed young white fans who were initially attracted by classic blues guitarists. Unfortunately, he had bad management, who often just bundled him into package deals for much less compensation than their headliners. (Cram and company name names, in this case Albert Grossman, who also handled Dylan, Joplin, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.)

Eventually, Cotton signed with better people and had quite a good run—especially by blues standards. Nevertheless, time always has the last word. Still, Cotton went out on a creative high, with the help of his friends and blues songwriter Tom Hambridge.

The Blues Under the Skin, Featuring Mance Lipscomb, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Other Legends

The original, real-deal blues musicians made vast fortunes possible, because R&B, rock & roll, and soul were built on top of their music. Yet, they often lived modestly, sometimes even in poverty. It is clear poverty was part of what Greek-born French documentarian Roviros Manthoulis was looking for when he started filming his blues documentary in America. To make his point regarding the underclass, Manthoulis added a fictional hybrid component, but the music he documented is the reason to rediscover the newly restored The Blues Under the Skin, which starts its first proper American theatrical release today in New York.

Freddy and Hattie Feester could be considered Manthoulis’s ill-fated Frankie and Johnny. After his release from prison, Feester wants to go straight, but nobody will give the ex-con a chance. Living off his wife so damages his pride, he slowly turns abusive. Neither are musicians, but they are certainly familiar with the blues world. He spends most of his time drinking in neighbor dive-clubs and, awkwardly, they both live with his mother, who was once a blues piano player, somewhat in the mold of Sweet Emma Barrett (who was more jazz, but you get the idea).

Although the grim Feester vignettes are filmed in color, they are stylistically reminiscent of Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World, but less compelling. If anything, these segments come across as somewhat condescending. Many black Americans struggled like the Feesters, but they carried on anyway, rather than lashing out in acts of domestic violence. Fortunately, the music makes up for the dramatic misfires.

There are some terrific performances from true legends, including Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (the greatest duo in American music, who tower over the likes of Sonny & Cher, Jan & Dean, and Hall & Oates) who deliver two standout performances, including a “John Henry” that is somehow profoundly bluesy and infectiously finger-snappable. Yet, nobody is as eerily powerful as Mance Lipscomb, whose “All Night Long” instantly transports viewers to the lonesome fields and railroads tracks of rural Texas.

Furry Lewis and Bukka White, whom some fans might have recently seen in The Blues Society also appear here—and it is always a pleasure to hear them. It does not get more legendary than B.B. King and Buddy Guy, but Manthoulis captured them in performance before they were nationalized recognized institutions, with clubs named in their honor. Plus, Roosevelt Sykes delivers the barrelhouse side of the blues with his rollicking “Runnin’ the Boogie.”

The Blues Society: Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell & Others

The Blues Revival was one thing the hippies got right—pretty much the only thing. Technically, the young fans who started the Memphis Country Blues Festival considered themselves more bohemians and beatniks than hippies—at least until they got into LSD. They admit that eventually made them hippies. They were still right about the music. Augusta Palmer, the daughter of music journalist Robert Palmer, chronicles the festival her father helped produce in The Blues Society, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

They were not particularly well-organized, but somehow the rag-tag Memphis Blues Society produced five years of the Festival, which had a special revival (of the revival) in 2017. A lot of amazing musicians performed during the original Revival years, including Mississippi Joe Callicott, Skip James, Nathan Beauregard, Piano Red, Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Obviously, a lot of deep Memphis Delta Bluesmen had roots in Tennessee. However, probably the two most important artists in the Blues Society story are Furry Lewis and Rev. Robert Wilkins, who played with his son, Rev. John Wilkins, who also headlined the 2017 show (before tragically dying of Covid complications). The story fittingly all unfolds with the help of Robert Palmer’s writings, read by the Eric Roberts.

The music in Palmer’s documentary is amazing. Lewis’s rendition of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” is an especially beautiful standout. Unfortunately, Palmer wastes a lot of time on “appropriation” grievances. Admittedly, the hippy fans maybe were not as sensitive to appearances of paternalism. However, they were the only valuing this music at the time.  It was the Blues Society and similar groups that generated gigs for these old school, real deal Bluesmen, so cut them some slack.

Cam Cole in American Mileage

Cam Cole is a hard rocking one-man-band, but he is hip enough to understand anyone jamming on a guitar owes their career to Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and all the other old school Bluesmen who came before. Fittingly, for his first U.S. tour, he takes long detours through the South, to drink deeply of its musical roots. Of course, there was a documentary crew along for the ride. Director Tim Hardiman’s resulting American Mileage releases today on VOD.

You might have actually seen Cole save the day for Hannah Waddingham on Ted Lasso. He never intended to be a one-man-band. It just sort of happened and went viral. With two records under his belt, produced by his manager Markus Stretz, who also produced this film, Cole finally sent out on his American tour. Of course, he did it his way, traveling cross-country in an old camper-top.

Cole hits all the usual pilgrimage spots: Stovall Farm (where Muddy Waters first performed), Tupelo (where Elvis bought his first guitar), both Mussel Shoals studios, Nashville, Beale Street, New Orleans, and North Mississippi Hill country, as well as numerous jukes along the way. He talks and jams with a number of real deal blues musicians, the most famous probably being the great Bobby Rush. Rush has already appeared in numerous docs, notably including I am the Blues, but someone really ought to dramatize his life story.

You might not have heard of Chloe Lavender, but she can play. It is nice to hear from surviving “Swampers” bassist and Mussel Shoals Sound Studio co-founder David Hood, if only in discussion with Cole. He has a good old time laughing, playing, and possibly eating roadkill at a barbeque with the great R.L. Boyce.

Buddy Guy: True to the Blues

Why would you ever interrupt Buddy Guy, even if it was to help tell his story? After all, the best way to understand Guy is through his music. Conceived as a companion piece to Devin Amar, Matt Michener & Charles Todd’s Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away (which aired last year as part of American Masters), viewers can finally watch a good number of the excerpted performances in their full and complete glory during Buddy Guy: True to the Blues, which airs Thursday night on New York’s PBS Thirteen (and is available on the PBS app).

True to the Blues more or less follows the chronology of Chase, but it only incorporates brief snippets of the film’s biographical context. This time, the music is front and center. Many of the selections are drawn from Live, the Real Deal, recorded in 1996, and rather logically, his appearances on PBS’s Austin City Limits.

We also see Guy performing a few songs solo for Amar and company, including the first he ever learned, John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen.’” His laidback rendition sounds totally cool, but it still has that driving beat. Appropriately, “The First Time I Met the Blues” appears after Guy discusses his initial meeting with Muddy Waters, while “Let Me Love You Baby” follows his reminiscences of the British rockers who championed him. The latter features a particularly blistering guitar solo and a jazzy horn line.

The Torch: Buddy Guy Pays it Forward

Regardless of genre, Buddy Guy is probably the most preeminent American musician who still performs regularly. (Happily, Charles Lloyd is also very active, but he is not as synonymous with jazz as Guy is with the blues.) Guy’s status as the dean of the bluesmen comes with a keen awareness of his responsibilities to the music, particularly his need to encourage younger generations to follow his example. Guy’s relationship with his presumptive heir, Quinn Sullivan is explored in Jim Farrell’s documentary, The Torch, which opens tomorrow in New York.

An artist of Buddy Guy’s stature is certainly worthy of competing documentary treatments, but as it happens, The Torch and the recent Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away compliment each other nicely. Whereas the previous doc chronicled his life, period by period, Farrell largely focuses on Guy, the elder statesman and mentor of the blues. There is a little bit of biographical background, but not too much.

Guy always enjoys encouraging young blues musicians, so he was happy to let Sullivan join him on-stage one fateful night. However, the eleven-year-old guitarist surprised him, in quite a good wasy. Ten years later, Sullivan still regularly performs and records with Guy. The trick is establishing himself, in his own right. Fortunately, in addition to Guy’s mentorship, he has the support of producer-songwriter-drummer Tom Hambridge, whom he met through Guy.

Even though Guy is clearly preoccupied with the issue of the music’s future, he is clearly in good health and robust energy, despite being in his mid-eighties (at least during the pre-pandemic years Farrell was following him). As a result, the film has none of the tragic poignancy of Keep on Keepin’ On, the Clark Terry-Justin Kauflin doc (and happily so). Guy could very well outlive all of us, but he is still mindful of the future. However, Farrell was able to concentrate on the music and the more practical lessons Guy imparts to Sullivan.

As you would expect, tunes like “Long Hard Road” and “Who’s Gonna Fill Those Shoes,” sound great. Obviously, Sullivan is no Buddy Guy yet. He is still a kid in his early 20’s, from a vastly different background. He has terrific chops, but gee whiz, being tipped as Guy’s successor in The Torch must really ratchet up the pressure, so good luck to him.

Blues on Beale: Documenting the Blues Challenge

The Beijing Winter Games are now underway, because the IOC and their corporate sponsors do not care about genocide in Xinjiang or the continuing oppression of Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Falun Dafa practitioners. Good for you for not watching, at least according to the record low ratings so far. How would you like to watch an international competition that brought people together instead? If so, you can check out this documentary sampling many of the highlights of the 36^th Blues Challenge, held in the historic blues clubs on Memphis’s Beale Street. (Sure, it is from early 2020, just before the Covid lockdowns, but chances are you haven’t heard who won yet.) The music is rocking and the vibes are good in Larry Lancit’s Blues on Beale, which releases this Friday on VOD.

The Blues Foundation’s annual competition showcases up-and-coming artists, but there are a number of legends enjoying the shows, including Bobby Rush and Shemekia Copeland. Each competitor represents a regional or international blues society, usually selected through a competitive process. In 2020, there were international blues musicians representing countries like Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Croatia. Yet, unlike the Olympics games, which surveys find only stoke nationalist sentiments, the musicians totally respect and enjoy their rivals’ performances. In fact, we eventually meet two alumni of the Challenge who are now married.

It looks like the musicians Lancit initially decided to focus on did not advance as far as he might have liked, but he adroitly pivots to incorporate performances from finalists in the later rounds. In a way, that adjustment gives the film more variety. Regardless, even though Jamell Richardson did not make the semi-finals, he is definitely one of the artists we bookmarked for future reference.

Robert Mugge’s Deep Blues

In 1990, you could walk right into Wade Walton’s Big Six Barber Shop in Clarksdale and get a shave, a haircut, maybe even a song from the Blues and civil rights icon, just like Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin’ Wolf once had, back in their day. As a local activist, Walton’s shop had once been bombed during the 1960s, but he had been largely overlooked by the music industry since cutting a few records in the 1960s. He was exactly the sort of real-deal Blues artists music journalist Robert Palmer and Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart set out to document in Robert Mugge’s freshly 4K-restored Deep Blues, which opens virtually tomorrow.

If you scratch a rock guitarist with chops, you will probably find Delta Blues in his blood. Stewart is no different from Keith Richards in that respect, so he seems to get along famously with Palmer (who wrote extensively about both Block and rock). They started their Blues tour in North Mississippi, which has its own harder-edged Blues sound, working their way down to the delta.

Their first encounter was with Booker T. Laury, a Blues and Boogie-Woogie pianist, who was a contemporary of Memphis Slim and Sunnyland Slim. He was still attacking the keys with explosive energy, making his rendition of “Memphis Blues” a fitting way to kick-off the film. Their next stop is with R.L. Burnside, whose plaintive vocals and rhythmic guitar sounds on “Jumper on the Line” were about as North Mississippi as you could ever hope to find. When you see his neighbors gather round his porch to listen to him play, you have to wonder if they understood how much European Blues fans would have paid to hear Burnside in such an intimate venue.

Palmer definitely kept it real, capturing Jessie Mae Hemphill performing both with her fife-and-drum band and her juke-joint Blues combo. Sadly, it is clear many Blues artists could not quit their day jobs, because Big Jack Johnson, a.k.a. “The Oilman” still held the day job that inspired his nickname, while Walton was still cutting hair in his barber shop. Weirdly, Walton is the only musician whose performance, an appealingly easy-going take of “Rock Me Baby” is not presented in its entirety. However, Big Jack Johnson’s “Daddy When is Mama Comin’ Home” is definitely one of the film’s highlights.

It is also cool when Mugge and Palmer literally take viewers into the jukes and soak up the ambiance while Junior Kimborough and Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes tear up multiple numbers. Barnes also happened to own the club where he played, on Greenville’s notorious Nelson Street. At the time, Barnes’ Playboy Club was part of the mayor’s campaign to revitalize the historic Blues district into a musical destination, much like Beale Street today. Sadly, that has yet to happen.

Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away

Buddy Guy was almost the equivalent of Motown's Funk Brothers at Chess Records. He was a frequent sideman, who recorded a few 45s at the famous blues label, but the Chess Brothers never really considered him a star. A group of fanatical blues in the UK thought differently. They included Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Eventually, Guy became a headliner and now he is probably the dean of living bluesmen. The guitarist looks back on his life and career in Devin Amar, Matt Mitchener & Charles Todd’s Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away, which premieres tomorrow on PBS as part of the current season of American Masters.

Buddy Guy hailed from Lettsworth, Louisiana. It wasn’t conveniently located near anything except cotton share-farms, especially not schools. Guy started working and playing in Baton Rouge, but most of his opportunities turned out to be false starts. He also scuffled hard after moving to Chicago, until a musician by the name of Muddy Waters heard him play.

Yet, for years, the start-and-stop pattern continued for Guy (on his Strat, rather than a Les Paul). Indeed, Amar and company appropriately emphasize Guy’s persistence throughout their profile. Even when British invasion stars starting singing Guy’s praises, Chess still didn’t really understand how to best showcase him (while Marshall Chess appears in In Their Own Words’ profile of Chuck Berry, he is absent here).

This also happens to be one of the more stylish and poetic films to appear under the American Masters banner, because of the vintage documentary footage and folk art that illustrates Guy’s early years. It vividly evokes the tenor of Guy’s life and times, in all its hardscrabble ruggedness. The trio of filmmakers also convey a nice sense of blues history through archival interviews with legends like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Willie Dixon, and Muddy Waters.

Redemption Road: The Music is Legit

There are no pets in this film. They would have died long ago for these characters. They get the blues, give the blues, live the blues, and sometimes even play the blues. The last part is inconveniently difficult for Jefferson Bailey. He fancies himself an aspiring blues musician, but he has a nasty case of stage fright. Unfortunately, he has even worse problems in Mario Van Peebles’ Redemption Road, which screens on the Grio TV.

During his time in Austin, Bailey has been binge-drinking and sleeping with the wife of the loan shark he is into, for far more than he can repay. The aggrieved Boyd is out to collect his interest and then some, so Bailey reluctantly agrees to return to Huntsville with the imposing Augy. Supposedly, he was hired by the estate of Bailey’s grandfather, to bring the prodigal underachiever home, so he can collect his legacy. However, the big man might have an ulterior motive for accepting the assignment.

There is real-deal blues music in Redemption, often played in authentic looking road houses. Thanks to performances from the likes of Gary Clark Jr., James “Nick” Nixon, and Alabama Slim & Little Freddie King, real blues aficionados will forgive the film a lot, including all the cliches in Morgan Simpson and George Richards’ screenplay (which are plentiful). On the other hand, the scruffy white, goatee-wearing Simpson does not look very legit playing a blues musician, not even in hipster Austin.

Indeed, Simpson is by far the film’s weakest link. On the other hand, the late, great Michael Clarke Duncan is perfectly cast as the hulking but sensitive Augy and Tom Skerrit adds some grizzled charisma as Santa, his blues club proprietor crony. Duncan and Skerrit each have some nicely turned confessional speeches, but Bailey’s drama quickly grows tiresome. Still, Luke Perry deserves credit for wholeheartedly playing against type as the violent sleaze, Boyd.

Tribeca ’18: Satan & Adam

For a musical art form to survive, it must be performed live, for real people, so it can actively engage with the world around it. Starting in 1986, the veteran bluesman known as Satan (born Sterling Magee, not a fan of organized religion) and Adam Gussow very definitely kept the blues alive. Playing on the streets of Harlem undeniably strengthened their attacks and gave them ample opportunity to pick-up on all the life going on around them. Satan’s vocals started to incorporate rap elements, while Gussow developed jazz saxophone influences on his mouth harp. V. Scott Balcerek chronicles the duo’s life and times in his twenty-three-years-in-the-making documentary, Satan & Adam, which screens during the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.

It is probably the second most famous creation story in blues, after Robert Johnson’s meeting at the crossroads. On that fateful day, Gussow asked to sit in with Satan, who was already quite recognizable for playing solo electric guitar, while accompanying himself on drums with the foot pedals. Satan was curious enough to agree and was pleasantly surprised when the kid managed to keep up. They started playing together so often, they became a regular act: Satan & Adam.

Initially, they busked on the streets, but they started to get respectable, recording an album, holding down a regular weekly bar gig, and signing with a manager. Frankly, their story was so attractive, it was probably inevitable they would get at least fifteen minutes of fame. They were after all the first interracial performers to appear together on the cover of Living Blues magazine. However, the music was so good and so honest, they maintained a loyal (and rather sizable, by blues standards) fan base, even after the music media moved on.

Balcerek managed to capture a fair amount of those glory days and he was also there for the quiet years of separation. Balcerek’s treatment is somewhat vague on the particulars, but Satan had something like a nervous breakdown and moved to Florida, where his Evangelical family forced him to temporarily give up the blues and the “Satan” moniker. In his nonfiction collection, Journeyman’s Road, Gussow more-or-less suggests he had to learn to let Satan go and get on with his own life.

As poignant as those sentiments were, it turned out the music wasn’t ready to let them go. In fact, S&A has the best third act of any music doc since Searching for Sugar Man. It was maybe more like a fourth or fifth act, but for their fans, it was utterly shocking good news, sort of like Harper Lee publishing Go Set a Watchman, but more satisfying.

It is that combination of pain and joy that makes Balcerek’s film such an immediately indispensable document of modern Americana. This film is blues to the bone, including the clear-eyed manner it addresses issues of race. As is often the case with jazz, the music we call the blues is frequently intertwined with racially charged questions of authenticity. Yet, without white (and increasingly foreign) audiences, there would be little market for the music. Of course, the first listeners Satan & Adam won over were “pre-gentrification” Harlem residents, who just responded to what they heard. If you respect the music, you also have to respect young players keeping it alive, regardless what they look like. (That is why it is so odd to see Al Sharpton turn up as a talking head in the film, because probably nobody else who has done more to foster racial tension in New York, through his involvement in the Tawana Brawley hoax and the Crown Heights Riots.)

Regardless, it is impossible to miss the appealing symbolism of Satan & Adam for music journalists and fans alike. Fortunately, Balcerek delves even deeper, really getting at the essence of friendship and music. The blues is rooted in the African American Delta experience, but it speaks to us on a universally accessible level. Balcerek presents Satan and Gussow in a way that we can similarly relate to. Satan & Adam is a terrific film that will move your feet and your soul. Very highly recommended, it screens this Wednesday (4/25) and Saturday (4/28), as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Sidemen: The Long Road to Glory

Just imagine how awesome the original Blues Brothers movie soundtrack would have been if it also included Muddy Waters. That had been the intention, but the ailing Muddy was not able to make the shoot with John Lee Hooker on Maxwell Street. However, Muddy’s longtime sidemen Pinetop Perkins and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith can be seen backing Hooker on “Boom Boom.” Still, only hardcore blues fans recognized them. They played on legendary recordings, but Perkins, Smith, and Howlin’ Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin received their overdue ovations very late in their lives and careers. Scott D. Rosenbaum profiles the three late great blues masters amid their eleventh-hour renaissances in Sidemen: Long Road to Glory (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Let’s make it clear, without Muddy and Wolf, there would be no Rolling Stones, no Eric Clapton, no Jimi Hendrix, and not much rock & roll to speak of. Without Perkins, Smith, and Sumlin, Muddy and Wolf would not have had the same potent groove. The musicians and listeners who really dove deeply into the blues understood their significance, but not casual listeners. As a result, all three found themselves scuffling when their bread-and-butter employers died in the early 1980s. Since Sumlin had always considered Wolf a surrogate father-figure, his death hit the guitarist even harder.

Rosenbaum includes long excerpts of the three legendary sidemen jamming together and with their admirers. He also interviewed each of them at length, so this film has obviously been a long time coming, considering all three men passed way in 2011, within an eight-month span. The film also features appreciations from Johnny Winter and Gregg Allman, both of whom subsequently played their final bars, as well. However, the film gives off positive vibes, rather than wallowing in elegiac melancholy. Nevertheless, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (which Sumlin felt had unjustly overlooked him) comes off looking like a bunch of jerks for not inducting Sumlin while he was still alive.

Their music pretty much speaks for itself—and Rosenbaum showcases it to maximum effect. Still, we also hear from some pretty talented colleagues and admirers, including Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, Bobby Rush, Elvin Bishop, and Shemekia Copeland, who are all, happily, very much alive and well, who say whatever is left to be said.

If you don’t get Sumlin, Perkins, and Smith (as well as Muddy and Wolf), by the time the too-short Sidemen finishes, you probably never will. You’re also most likely tone-deaf and generally beyond hope as a person. In fact, Rosenbaum has managed to craft a loving tribute that never feels indulgently fannish. He does right by the men who were true to the music for so many years. Very highly recommended, Sidemen opens this Friday (8/18) in New York, at the Landmark Sunshine.

Reel South: Shake Em On Down

Stuckey’s didn’t just bring the world pecan rolls. They helped facilitate the Blues Revival. One of their roadside service stations regularly took messages and received mail (including royalty checks and plane tickets) for their occasional employee, “Mississippi” Fred McDowell. His story might follow a somewhat familiar trajectory, but McDowell’s rise from utter obscurity to an international concert and recording star is still remarkable. His life and career are chronicled in Joe York’s Shake Em On Down (trailer here), which airs as part of the current season of Reel South on PBS’s World Channel (hosted by Darius Rucker).

McDowell (those who knew him put the stress on the “Mac”) never recorded during the vintage blues boom of the 1930s. Although popular at local jukes and dances, he went completely undocumented until Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins recorded him in 1959. However, the Lomax seal of approval would become the gold standard for blues revivalists in the 1960s. It turned out McDowell was ridiculously easy to find (thanks again to Stuckey’s) and a tailor-made performer for the folk and blues festival circuit.

You could almost say McDowell was a precursor to punk. He could get a huge sound out of an unamplified guitar, often working just one chord, or even a single note. McDowell had lived a hard life, but he was still happy to mentor a young kid who idolized him, named Bonnie Raitt.

We hear a good deal of McDowell’s music, including the title tune, which hipper viewers should already know the Rolling Stones covered (but did not write themselves). Of course, nearly all of McDowell’s contemporaries are now jamming in the sky, but York incorporates some archival reminiscences from his great friend and rival R.L. Burnside. He also scores interviews with Raitt, Burnside’s grandson Cedric, Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal, Dom Flemons, R.L. Boyce, Barbara Dane, and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars.

Clearly, York and his expert commentators have a good sense of the music and history tied up in the North Mississippi blues scene. It is tightly constructed, briskly paced survey of one of the most influential blues artists. If it does not convince you McDowell was the man, then you weren’t paying attention. Highly recommended, Shake Em On Down premieres this Sunday (3/5) on Reel South.

SXSW ’16: I am the Blues

The blues survived segregation, share-cropping, music industry exploitation, and the sort of health risks that come with hard-drinking and late nights, but will it survive with the passing of the old guard? The answer to that question is not at all certain to the blues veterans still playing and gigging. What keeps them so resilient? The music, stupid. You can hear the history and the character in every performance captured in Daniel Cross’s I am the Blues (trailer here), which screens at the 2016 SXSW.

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is not just a blues guitarist. He is one of the last masters of the Bentonia Blues style associated with Skip James. Holmes is also more than a musician. He is the owner-proprietor of the Blue Front Café, one of the last surviving classic juke joints. Business is not what it used to be, but Holmes might have a sudden influx of geeky fanboys following the doc’s SXSW screenings.

Everybody Cross features can still lay it down, but Bobby Rush maintains a B.B. King-style touring schedule. He was not proclaimed “King of the Chitlin’ Circuit” for nothing. Like a Sinatra or a Tom Jones, he still has that magnetic stage charisma. Bobby Rush (nobody calls him just “Rush” he tells the audience) becomes the film’s de facto guide, sitting in with a number of his old friends and helping Cross to coax stories out of them in their interview segment.

We will also meet Henry Gray, the dean of the assembled musicians, who played with Robert Lockwood, Jr., Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf. More than anyone, he developed the jazzy barrelhouse sound associated with Chicago piano blues. You can definitely hear some of his Louisiana roots in there.

For a smoother R&B-ish blues sound, the film turns to Barbara Lynn, a trailblazer blues artist, who was charting at a time when about the only other woman playing an electric guitar was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. When they all get together to jam, the good times roll.

Of course, their memories are not always pleasant. They all suffered the indignities of southern segregation and northern racism. The film’s superstar, Bobby Rush is probably the most forthright discussing such issues. Yet, some of the film’s most memorable oral history simply relates universal human drama, such as Carol Fran’s story of the man who inspired her first hit, “Emmitt Lee.”

I am the Blues is a terrific film that does the angels’ work documenting original generation blues artists for posterity. It is a deceptively laidback film that hits us in the gutbucket with some pretty heavy truths in between the getting-down. It sounds great too. Just about everyone is still at the top of their form and none of the jamming musicians lacks for enthusiasm. Very highly recommended for anyone who cares anything for American music, I am the Blues screens again this Friday (3/18), as part of this year’s SXSW.

A Celebration of Blues & Soul: the 1989 Inaugural Concert Rediscovered and Restored

It was a Texas kind of night in D.C. A concert bill that featured the likes of Billy Preston, Albert Collins, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Delbert McClinton certainly reminds us of Texas’s contributions to blues, soul, and R&B. Ostensibly, the show was part of the inaugural festivities of President George H.W. Bush, another Texan, by choice. Of course, inaugurations are really just an excuse to party, which is definitely the vibe of A Celebration of Blue & Soul: the 1989 Inaugural Concert (promo here), which airs nationally on participating PBS stations during the March 1-16 pledge drive.

Long feared lost to the ages, the multi-camera recordings of the inauguration night bash have been rediscovered and restored, with a longer DVD release planned for the future. Naturally, Bush campaign manager and former Percy Sledge sideman Lee Atwater served as the honorary chairman of the concert and the invisible hand behind the scenes bringing it all together. After his greeting, the shorter PBS version launches into Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time,” perhaps the most perfunctory performance of the evening.  Next, Atwater’s old boss Sledge gives the crowd what it wants: “When a Man Loves a Woman,” for probably the 500,000^th time in his career, but he still does his thing with genuine feeling.

Obviously, the 1989 concert has been edited with an eye towards greatest hits to make it pledge drive friendly, but just about everyone brought their A-game for their signature tunes. Eddie Floyd shows the showmanship of an old pro on “Knock on Wood,” while Sam Moore lays down the authority on “Soul Man,” backed by musical director Billy Preston and Stax veterans Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn.

Clearly, there is a lot of real deal blues on the program, including legendary Chess Records mainstay Willie Dixon performing “Hoochie Coochie Man,” which represents the height of blues authenticity. Albert Collins also gets his solo spotlight on “Frosty” (along with his protégé, Vaughan) as does McClinton on “Just a Little Bit.” Most of the artists are backed by the funky ensemble led by Preston and featuring Dunn and Cropper (but alas multi-reed jazzman Patience Higgins is not prominently spotlighted in the PBS cut). Of course, Bo Diddley brought in his own band, because that was how he rolled. He also had Ronnie Wood sit-in on the classic “Bo Diddley Beat” strutter, “Hey, Bo Diddley.”

For understandable reasons, Stevie Ray Vaughan is the only artist allotted more than one number (this is pledge season after all), but he sure could play. He also closes the show with some fittingly nonpartisan, patriotic life-affirming sentiments. It is depressing to think only a year and a half later his own life would be cut short in helicopter crash, while he was still at the absolute peak of his powers. Indeed, the 1989 Inaugural concert captures for posterity many late greats in an appreciative setting, performing the songs that made them famous.

This is a great week for music on PBS. While the 1989 Inaugural Concert does not offer as many surprises as last night’s Jazz and the Philharmonic, it cooks along nicely. The concert itself is a lot of good, clean, soulful fun, but do not be surprised if someone asks you for money at least once during the broadcast.  Recommended for fans of blues and Stax-style Memphis soul, A Celebration of Blue & Soul: the 1989 Inaugural Concert airs twice today (3/1) on New York’s Thirteen and can be seen on PBS outlets throughout the country over the next two weeks.

(Photos: Randy Santos)

Margaret Mead ’13: This Ain’t No Mouse Music

Chris Strachwitz was born to an aristocratic family in Lower Silesia, but WWII drastically altered his destiny, turning him into the song-hunting heir of Alan Lomax.  News that the advancing Soviet army was summarily executing “capitalists” convinced his family to emigrate west.  Encountering New Orleans Jazz and Delta Blues as an American teen, he subsequently founded Arhoolie Records (named after a form of field holler Lomax recorded) to seek out and preserve the earthy sounds that spoke to him.  Fifty years later, Strachwitz looks back on it all in Chris Simon & Maureen Gosling’s This Ain’t No Mouse Music (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History.

“Mouse Music” is a vague term Strachwitz uses for the sort of slick, mass produced music he can’t abide. His musician friends cannot really define it either, but they know you don’t want to be it.  Like Lomax, Strachwitz did much of his recording in the field, tracking down many of the real deal Blues, Cajun, Creole, Cajunto, and Appalachian musicians that had slipped through the modern world’s cracks.  The first time out, he hit major pay dirt, “discovering” Mance Lipscomb. Thanks to Arhoolie, artists like Big Joe Williams, post-“Hound Dog” Big Mama Thornton, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Michael Doucet, and Clifton Chenier would find a dedicated national audience.

During his travels, Strachwitz met and collaborated with filmmaker Les Blank (to whom Mouse Music is dedicated) and became a family friend to scores of musicians. Evidently, Strachwitz largely picked up the Bay Area politics surrounding him, but Simon and Gosling mostly steer clear of potentially divisive subjects.  However, they cannot resist including the story of how Strachwitz obtained publishing rights to Country Joe McDonald’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.”  Evidently, the folk-rocker needed to lay down the future Woodstock ditty quickly and was referred to Strachwitz’ living room-studio by friends.  In lieu of payment, Strachwitz accepted publishing rights, proving former Silesian aristocrats are better businessmen than hippies.

Simon and Gosling keep up with the only slightly manic Strachwitz quite well, conveying a good sense of the man and his label’s roster of artists.  While not everything Arhoolie releases will be to everyone’s tastes, the depth and breadth of it is quite impressive.  Indeed, there is something very Whitman-esque about Strachwitz’s far-ranging pursuit of this roots music.  The doc also provides a nice Blues fix, which is tough to get through mainstream media outlets.  Recommended for fans of unvarnished musical Americana, This Ain’t No Mouse Music screens this Friday (10/18) as part of this year’s Margaret Mead Film Festival at the AMNH.

ADIFF ’12: Times Like Deese

The looming liquidation of Hostess Brands represents 185,000 jobs likely lost.  That is a whole lot of blues in the Obama era.  Ever mindful of the significance of an African American president in the White House, Marteen Schmidt & Thomas Doebele take a Lomaxian journey into deep southern blues country to find out how blue the traditional bluesmen’s blues still are in Times Like Deese: You Can’t Keep a Man Down Always (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Rarely is heard a discouraging word about the 44^th president, but L.C. Ulmer’s first blues is dedicated to James Meredith, the civil rights pioneer who integrated Ole Miss and later became a high profile staffer for Sen. Jesse Helms.  His lyrics end before that point, making it exactly the sort of song Schmidt and Doebele were hoping to record.  “Blind Mississippi” Morris Cummings seems the readiest to oblige with political material directly addressing current controversies.  Less topical but still on-point for the Dutch filmmakers, musicians like Josh “Razorblade” Stewart, Chester “Memphis Gold” Chandler, and Charlie Sayles often sing blues about their experiences serving in Viet Nam.

Times Like Deese (a problematically condescending attempt at approximating rural Southern vernacular) has some deeply felt music, but its economic analysis is rather shallow.  Regardless, it is nice to see the blues is alive and well as a form of musical statement.  Perhaps Stewart has the most memorable performance, with a decidedly ribald take on “Trouble in Mind,” but most of the old school bluesmen acquit themselves in style.  However, the occasional nods to hip hop are consistently underwhelming.

It might shock New Yorkers to learn B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis actually books blues artists, unlike the 42^nd Street club that largely presents vaguely blues-influenced rock bands.  Indeed, it is quite cool to see Cummings play a set there.  Co-director-co-editors Schmidt and Doebele make storied Blues capitals like Clarksdale appear almost completely untouched by time or economic development.  Granted, profound change might well be due there, but there also seems to be a bit of the blues collectors’ notorious poverty fetishism going on as well.

Arguably, the blues gets less financial love and support than even jazz, so any blues doc treating the music with respect earns a recommendation for fans.  TLD would have served the music better if it were not so desperate to make political points, but Schmidt and Doebele are sure to impress plenty of festival programmers that way.  Recommended for traditional blues devotees, Times Like Deese has its American premiere this Saturday (11/24) at the Columbia Teacher’s College Chapel as part of the 2012 ADIFF in New York.

Pledge-Breaking: Legends of Folk

It was a time when folk singers could afford to pay rent in Greenwich Village. While jazz still has a toe-hold in Lower Manhattan (tenuous as it might be) and popular forms flourish, folk’s salad days in the Village (East or West) are essentially over. Yet, its musical influence persists, thanks to the major recording stars that emerged from those coffeehouses. Folk’s glory days are revisited in Legends of Folk: the Village Scene (promo here), a greatest hits special tailor-made for pledge-breaks, produced and directed by Jim Brown, which airs this coming Tuesday on New York’s WNET.

Hosted by the appropriately hospitable Noel Paul Stookey, the Paul of Peter, Paul & Mary, Legends never attempts to be an exhaustive survey, like Ken Burns’ ambitious (if somewhat controversial) Jazz. Like a compilation CD for your TV, it covers all the big names that were ever on the scene, mostly showing complete performances in their entirety.

Some of their choices are quite shrewd. It is rather eye-opening to see a rather outgoing young Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” compared to his comparatively reserved stage persona of recent years. Stookey and company are also well represented with a vintage recording of “If I Had a Hammer” that nicely showcases their harmonies, while serving as a dramatic contrast to the snoozy stereotype of folk songs. For those who are wondering, the Don McLean selection is not “American Pie,” which frees up a lot of time, but on the other hand, who really cares about “Castles in the Air?”

To its credit, Legends stretches the genre definition a bit, including artists from the blues and roots revival. Yet, frustratingly, the only musical performances that talking heads speak over are those from Mississippi John Hurt and The New Lost City Ramblers. This is particularly frustrating in the case of Hurt, because his segment is ostensibly about how great it was for a real deal old timer to final get some respect.

Quibbles of a jazz and blues fan aside, Legends is perfectly respectable music television, if never especially challenging or deep. It follows comfortably in the tradition of previous nostalgic jukebox specials frequently broadcast during pledge drives, almost like the Time-Life Music commercials you find yourself watching in spite of yourself. For old folkie-singer-songwriter types, Legends airs this coming Tuesday (8/9) on WNET, but do not be surprised if someone asks you for money.

(New Lost City Ramblers photo: David Gahr)