The Blues and always the Blues! When I was putting together my Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 The Desert Blues and Not Just edition Martin Scorsese’ The Blues documentary that I had seen two decades ago was on the back of my mind.
The Blues is a 2003 seven episodes documentary film produced by Martin Scorsese. In each episode a different different director goes into a step of the history of the Blues. It’s worthy every second of footage, stories, music.
01: Feel Like Going Home.
directed by Martin Scorsese, featuring
Ali Farka Touré, Corey Harris, Salif Keita, Son House, Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, Keb’ Mo’, Willie King
02: The Soul of a Man.
directed by Wim Wenders with music by Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir.
03: The Road to Memphis.
directed by Richard Pearce, featuring B. B. King, Bobby Rush, Rosco Gordon,
Ike Turner.
04: Warming by the Devil’s Fire.
directed by Charles Burnett, featuring:
Tommy Hicks and Nathaniel Lee Jr., and performances by Big Bill Broonzy, Elizabeth Cotten, Reverend Gary Davis,
Ida Cox, Willie Dixon, Jesse Fuller, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Vasti Jackson, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Victoria Spivey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Dinah Washington, Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson.
05: Godfathers and Sons
directed by Marc Levin, featuring
Marshall Chess and Chuck D.
06: Red, White and Blues.
directed by Mike Figgis. This episode is focused on the blues in Britain and the British Invasion effect on American blues.
07: Piano Blues.
directed Clint Eastwood, featuring
Marcia Ball, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Pinetop Perkins.
The Blues A Musical Journey is a cd box-set companion of the documentary with recordings from August 10, 1920 to April 9, 2003. It’s over six hours of all sorts of blues! It goes from Othar Turner & the Rising Star Fife & Drum to Bonnie Raitt through Sun House, Jimmi Hendrix, Blind Willie McTell, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Robert Johnson Howlin’ Wolf with dozens of blues players. The Blues A Musical Journey is more standard and geographically confined than my Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 The Desert Blues and Not Just edition, but it’s an absolute joy.
My beloved Blind Willie McTell titles my favourite Bod Dylan song on Dylan’s voice because “… no one can sing the blues / Like Blind Willie McTell. Dylan is on piano and voice, Mark Knopfler on acoustic guitar. Blind Wille McTell, the song, has been providing endless hours of conversation with a musician friend. Is it a song? A poem? A criticism? A critique? An observation? What are the lyrics really about? To me, they’re about America and its History and ways. It’s also a testament to Dylan’s lyric brilliancy.
Blind Wille McTell
I seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying this land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem
Well, I travel through east Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Wille McTell
Mmm, I heard that hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Was his only audience
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a moaning
Hear that undertaker’s bell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
There’s a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He’s dressed up like a squire
Bootleg whiskey in his hand
There’s a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
God is in His heaven
And we all want what’s His
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I’m gazing out the window
Of that old Saint James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
(Bob Dylan)
Stealing from The Legendary Tiger Man – the blues, like folk, is all about inspiration and ideas passed around – don’t firetruck Christmas, but I’ve got the Blues!
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 