Les Blank’s I Went to the Dance

For some reason, French lyrics sound so much better when accompanied by accordion and violin. When you add washboard, you’re really in business. You will hear a lot of serious Louisiana sounds, particularly Creole, Cajun, and Zydeco music in the late great music documentarian Les Blank’s 5K-restored I Went to the Dance (a.k.a. J’ai ete au Bal), co-directed with his longtime collaborator (and editor) Maureen Gosling & Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz, which opens today in New York.

As you should know, Cajuns were originally the Arcadians, who came Louisiana, the nearest French-speaking region on the continent, after the English expelled them from Nova Scotia. Tourists often get chewed out for confusing Cajuns with Creoles, but Blank’s experts, folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet and songwriter Michael Doucet, emphasize the cross-pollination between the two Louisiana cultures.

Blank always had a sly, slightly eccentric sensibility that some people still don’t get, because they aren’t sufficiently hip. I Went to the Dance is a great example. It starts with a very funny musician’s joke from accordionist Marc Savoy, who later delights Blank by standing on his instrument to demonstrate its strength.  Of course, there is also a whole lot terrific music from musicians like Clifton Chenier (whose appearance is relatively brief, since Blank already devoted a full documentary to him, Hot Pepper), Queen Ida, Dennis McGee, Marc & Ann Savoy, Michael Doucet & Beausoleil, and Dewey Balfa, who gets credit for launching the Cajun music revival at 1960s folk festivals.

Les Blank’s A Poem is a Naked Person

This is the film they did not get to see at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. Les Blank’s Blankian documentary profile of Leon Russell had been accepted by the fest, but its subject refused to sanction its release. Inconveniently, it was a work-for-hire project for which Russell retained all rights, only allowing occasional screenings at Blank retrospectives, provided the filmmaker was in attendance. Finally, Harrod Blank has fulfilled the bucket-list item inherited from his late father, shepherding A Poem is a Naked Person (trailer here) to its long-awaited theatrical release, starting this Wednesday at Film Forum.

In the early 1970s, Russell was a highly regarded session musician poised to break out as a solo artist. He was touring regularly and had already released an album that went gold. Having shared in the critical heat generated by the Mad Dogs & Englishmen documentary when he was performing as Joe Cocker’s musical right-hand man, Russell and his producer Denny Cordell wanted their own doc to showcase the singer-songwriter-piano player as a leader. Blank was recommended and accepted the gig, setting up shop in the artist colony-like grounds surrounding Russell’s private studio.

Of course, Blank would not merely point the camera at Russell and ask some softball questions backstage. He became intrigued and inspired by Russell’s relationship with the neighboring Oklahoma community. When you watch Poem you understand all the influences that shaped Russell into a rocker, whose set lists were filled with songs by Hank Williams and Leadbelly. Blank also relished the eccentricities of the colorful locals, such as the old couple who attended building demolitions like rock groupies, as well as the other artists Russell had pulled into his orbit. Painter Jim Franklin is particularly notable. He had been recruited to paint murals on the studio walls, but his creative impulses found more stimulation at the bottom of Russell’s empty swimming pool. Decades later he would paint the film’s poster.

There is no shortage of Russell’s music in Poem. Blank also captures performances by George Jones, Willie Nelson, and Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band. Yet, it is the seemingly eccentric, but actually quite telling interludes that must have thrown Russell and Cordell. Frankly, in terms of tone, Poem is not so very different from Bert Stern’s enduring classic Jazz on a Summer’s Day, but they just didn’t get it, until now. Although this caused Blank much frustration, it probably did more long term harm to Russell’s career.

Had it released in 1974, Poem may very well have been Blank’s biggest box office hit, but it is hard to believe he would have gone Hollywood rather than making classics like Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe, Burden of Dreams, and Always for Pleasure. On the other hand, it is easy to imagine Poem getting revived year after year, to screen alongside perennials like Scorsese’s The Last Waltz. Frankly, Poem was perfect for its time, reflecting the youth culture’s increasingly ironic relationship with media. Had it been readily accessible, Blank’s film would have maintained awareness of Russell, regularly introducing him to new fans. Instead, he has become a cult figure in need of periodic rediscovery.

There is indeed some great music in Poem. Whether your tastes run towards rock, country, or blues, Russell’s sound is swampy enough for all to relate to. It is also an excellent example of Blank’s keen eye for regional culture and his gently humanistic sense of humor. According to the legends that have swirled around the long unseen film, a parachutist seen performing a glass eating trick on-camera is thought by some to be D.B. Cooper. Unfortunately, Mr. Cooper has not been available to confirm or deny his participation. Regardless, it is a whole lot of funky fun. Highly recommended for fans of Southern blues-roots-rock and Blank’s slyly insightful style of documentary filmmaking, A Poem is a Naked Person finally opens this Wednesday (7/1) in New York, at Film Forum.

Les Blank: Blues and Cajun Music

Blues, roots music, garlic, and eccentric German directors are the stuff of inspiration for documentarian Les Blank. Probably best known for his documentaries featuring Werner Herzog, Blank’s second film was in fact a Dizzy Gillespie short. A wide cross-section of his filmography screens at the Film Forum for a week-long retrospective, starting this Friday.

Blank’s initial breakthrough documentary was The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, but he will probably always be remembered for his Werner Herzog films. The twenty-minute short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is pretty much what it sounds like—basically Fear Factor for the art-house set. As bizarre motivation, the established Herzog bet Errol Morris he would eat his shoe if the aspiring filmmaker ever finished his first film. Obviously it worked, and Blank was there when Herzog lived up to his part of the bargain. (If you’re wondering, he cooked it first, with garlic.) Soon thereafter, Blank would document the turbulent making of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, in Burden of Dreams (trailer here). It was a process often described as well above and far beyond the chaos of Apocalypse Now.

However, some of the coolest films in the series relate to various forms of American folk music. Blank returned to the blues in 1971 for A Well Spent Life, a profile of Texas country bluesman Mance Lipscomb. Unlike the rest of his blues revival colleagues, Lipscomb was “discovered” in the 1960’s, not “rediscovered.” He made his recording debut on Arhoolie, the blues enthusiast label in 1960. Oddly enough, he would also cut an album for Sinatra’s Reprise label, which not surprisingly, quickly went out of print.

Well Spent rather starkly captures the life of a sharecropper who just happened to be a world renowned blues artist. Recent revisionist blues scholarship argues many blues collectors have idolized individuals who really did not consider themselves musicians. Playing the blues for their own enjoyment or an extra dollar here and there, they happened to be captured on songhunters’ field recordings and from there, legends ballooned. In a way, Well Spent lends some credence to those arguments. Clearly, Lipscomb spent far more time eking out a hardscrabble existence as a sharecropper than singing the blues. However, there is an undeniable, almost archetypal appeal to Lipscomb’s blues. Often seen performing backlit by sunsets, Well Spent also features some of Blank’s most attractive photography.

While his Lipscomb film is a mid-sized forty-four minutes, Blank also made some relatively brief blues films, like the five minute Cigarette Blues. Starring Sonny Rhodes, also from Texas but based in the Bay Area, Cigarette is an unusual “PSA” produced by the Dallas Museum of Art. Featuring Rhodes’ smoking (if you will) slide guitar and a cigarette-butt sculpture created by an artist recently deceased from lung cancer, it is one of the hipper anti-smoking film.

Blank did his undergraduate work at Tulane, so his affection for Cajun and Creole culture should come as no surprise. The full length documentary J'ai Été Au Bal gives an affectionate history of Cajun music. While Zydeco artists like Clifton Chenier (also the subject of Blank’s earlier film Hot Pepper) are discussed, in this film Blank keeps his focus on the Arcadians. However, he argues the two musical forms are closely related. Both use the same ingredients derived from French, African, and blues music sources, differing only in their proportions.

Au Bal gives a brisk history of Cajun music’s milestones, including the first Cajun record cut by Joe and Cléoma Falcon, the husband and wife accordionist and guitarist. Blank profiles many Cajun musicians, including fiddler Dennis McGee, considered the apostolic link between the original Cajun musicians and succeeding generations. Arguably forward thinking in his time, in 1929 McGee cut six sides with Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin, at a time when racially integrated sessions were far from the norm. We also hear from many more contemporary performers, like Dewey Balfa, who is credited with launching a Cajun music revival with a well publicized set at the Newport Folk Festival. Altogether it gives viewers a comprehensive taste of Cajun music.

Blank has a true eye and ear for the music of Americana. His Film Forum retrospective starts Friday, screening twenty-six films in seven days. A Well Spent Life screens Saturday the 15th with Blank’s Herzog films. J'ai Été Au Bal screens Sunday with Hot Pepper. Cigarette Blues screens next Thursday with Blank’s polka film In Heaven There Is No Beer?, one of the many interesting combinations of the series.