Year: 2016
Director: Bernard MacMahon
This is a wonderful and groundbreaking project. Three documentary films, the first two an hour long, the third lasting an hour and a half, about the earliest recordings of American blues and country musicians in 1926-1927 – the time when radio came of age, so the relatively wealthy middle classes immediately stopped buying records (sound familiar?) The record companies sent recording engineers out to the “poor” areas, purely to record the music people were playing and listening to – so they could sell them records. There was no cultural preservation agenda (unlike say Alan Lomax in later years), and thus we get to see and hear how the Carter Family, Charlie Patton, the Memphis Jug Band, Mississippi John Hurt plus a bunch of other obscure singers/musicians were first recorded. The recording people put ads in the newspapers asking for musicians to record – they traveled miles to do so.
The producers have done an excellent, meticulously researched job here. They found photos and film of the early recording equipment, never seen before. It was all direct to disk, powered by huge portable generators that lasted 3 1/2 minutes before the gigantic weight that was lowered to power them reached the bottom of its cycle. Hence the 3 minute pop song.
AND – they built one of these things and there’s a fourth film with a bunch of present-day people recording some of the songs in the same way – direct to disk (warning – contains, inevitably, Jack White).
The producers have tracked down descendants of the original artists, some of whom are still playing their ancestors’ music. There’s also Hopi Indians, Mexicans and Cajun music.
This whole caboodle is apparently being released in December on PBS in the US and presumably round the same time in the UK – I just saw it at the Sydney Film Festival. There’ll be a 100 song CD and a glossy book etc.
Look out for it, it’s truly essential.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Well researched music documentaries.
Here’s an interview with the director from the London Film Festival. He did a Q and A after the Sydney Film Festival screenings and impressed me as a very passionate, honest person.
Sounds fantastic – thanks for the info and recommendation, Mousemeister!
One of the people featured is a favourite of mine, Mississippi John Hurt. In the film they tell the story of how after he made a few recordings in the 1920’s he disappeared from view until he was discovered living where he had always lived in Avalon, Mississippi. This appearance at the Newport Folk Festival was his first public performance since 1929.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVKjsR4yBro
Wow! Just wow!
What’s wrong with Jack White thoughbut? He is passionate about the Blues, knows where his debts lie and is no mean performer himself on that old-fashioned instrument, the electric guitar.
His wig. That’s what’s wrong with him.
Embrace the pate, Jack. Embrace the pate.
I thought he was terribly serious in that film with Jimmy Page and Bono. Whereas Page was grinning with delight at every note of Rumble (I think it was) poor old Jack was supposedly enthusing about Son House but you’d think his grandmother had just died. Well, maybe she had.
But yeah he knows his stuff.
BTW Son House is in this film. Awesome.
Peter Case organised a really nice various artists tribute album to Mississippi John a few years back, ‘Avalon Blues’. I must dig it out… Mind you, his ‘Candyman’ was a blight on the British folk-blues scene – everyone seemed to perform it and to my mind it’s dreadful.
I’ve always thought it curious that the Brit folk-bluesers went for Broonzy/Brownie McGhee/Mississippi John while the ‘blues boom’ electric people beloved of Johnny C went for Robert Johnson. John Renbourn (in the former camp) did record one Robert J song (‘Come On In My Kitchen’) back in the day, but I can’t think of any others.
I recently picked up a fascinating second hand book on 20s/30s bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw ‘The High Sherriff of Hell’. Posting one of his tunes might be an Afterword first:
Hmm. I remember Ralph McTell enthusing about Robert Johnson too