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.”