Category Archives: Film

Blues, Film, Muddy Waters

Chicago Blues 1972 documentary

chicago blues

This is a very fine “time capsule” directed by Harley Cokeliss, an American director, producer, writer and actor born February 11, 1945 in San Diego. The cinematography is by master cameraman Tak Fujimoto.

CHICAGO BLUES explores the hard lives of bluesmen in Chicago narrated by an insightful and incendiary commentary from comedian turned political activist Dick Gregory. CHICAGO BLUES is a an interesting document of a generation of great musicians trying to make a living in a racially divided America.

‘‘CHICAGO BLUES” is an angry film. To document Chicago blues at its source, the British director Harley Cokliss went to South Side clubs, storefront churches and homes. He wound up with both a performance film and an anti-travelogue on ghetto life. It is a stark, forceful combination.
– Jon Pareles (NYT, 1983)

 

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Blues, Film, Lightnin' Hopkins

Documentary: The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins

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LH1

“He was like an ancient oracle in his uncanny ability to improvise rhyming blues songs about a person or situation that revealed a truth that was perfect in its simplicity, yet infinitely complex in its layers of meaning.”
– Les Blanks on Lightnin’ Hopkins 

This little film is a poem, a celebration of art and musicianship. It feels otherworldly, almost magic in it’s realism. For me it is one of the very few films that manage to capture the essence of music. You will know a lot more about “the blues” after seeing it, but it may take some time to sink in. One day you’ll sit in your car on your way home from work and it will dawn on you, and you’ll want to watch it again. I did, and I’ve seen it many times. The great Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins is captured brilliantly in this deeply moving “story”.

This little film is a music poem.

I came to Hopkins through Townes Van Zandt. I read several interviews where he talked about his great admiration for Lightnin’ Hopkins. This has been my way to the blues, through country and folk. Through Hank Williams and Townes Van Zandt.

Les Blank reveals Lightnin’s inspiration, and features a lot of classic blues. Scenes include an outdoor barbecue, a rodeo and a visit to Hopkins’s boyhood town of Centerville, Texas. I believe this powerful portrait is among Blank’s special masterworks.

Made by Les Blank and Skip Gerson, probably in 1968 (…or 1969 or 1970, there are sources on all these years).

LH2

 

The Blues accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins:

You make your bed hard, baby,
and calls it ease.
The blues is just a funny feelin’,
yet some folks calls it a mighty bad disease.

“This line was composed late one night while I was filming what started out to be an ordinary interview. I had asked him to tell me what the blues meant to him. He picked up his guitar and started to sing about a woman named Mary who had left him. Earlier that evening his wife had left him after a nasty argument that caused her cousin to attempt to shoot Lightnin’.

While the song was being sung, the cousin was lurking outside the apartment door with a loaded pistol. Lightnin’ also had a large loaded gun stuck down the front of his pants. Hardly a situation in which to delve into an academic and linear exploration of the nature of truth and the blues, but I came away feeling I knew a lot more about it than before, but I couldn’t exactly put it in words.”

– Les Blanks (notes on the film)

– Hallgeir

Country, Film, Waylon Jennings

Documentary: My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys a musical documentary with Waylon Jennings

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WJ2

“I think everybody secretly dreams of being a cowboy, no matter where they`re from.”
– Waylon Jennings

It is “roundup” time in Texas. In a ritual that has changed little since the times of “the wild west”, cowboys ride out twice a year to gather up the cattle and prepare them for the market.

Waylon Jennings spent 10 days roaming the 250 square miles of the 06 Kokernot Ranch with these cowboys to tell the story of his experience in this musical documentary, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.”

Waylon Arnold Jennings (June 15, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Jennings began playing guitar at 8 and began performing at 12 on KVOW radio. He formed a band, The Texas Longhorns. Jennings worked as a D.J. on KVOW, KDAV, KYTI, and KLLL. In 1958, Buddy Holly arranged Jennings’s first recording session, of “Jole Blon” and “When Sin Stops (Love Begins).” Holly hired him to play bass. During the “Winter Dance Party Tour,” in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a plane to arrive at the next venue. Jennings gave up his seat in the plane to J. P. Richardson, who was suffering from a cold. The flight that carried Holly, Richardson, and Ritchie Valens crashed, on the day later known as The Day the Music Died. Following the accident, Jennings worked as a D.J. in Coolidge, Arizona, and Phoenix. He formed a rockabilly club band, The Waylors. He recorded for independent label Trend Records, A&M Records before succeeding with RCA Victor after achieving creative control of his records.

During the 1970s, Jennings joined the Outlaw movement. He released critically acclaimed albums Lonesome, On’ry and Mean and Honky Tonk Heroes, followed by hit albums Dreaming My Dreams and Are You Ready for the Country. In 1976 he released the album Wanted! The Outlaws with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter, the first platinum country music album.
– Wikipedia

WJ1

It is fascinating and educational with a fantastic soundtrack.

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys – a musical documentary with Waylon Jennings:

– Hallgeir

Film, Neil Young

Video of the day: Neil Young BBC documentary Don’t Be Denied

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screenshot Neil Young

 

“One of the funniest things about making this film were the doom merchants who popped up regularly during our research, like the fortune tellers that litter epic Greek tales. Neil will never talk about this or that, this will all end in tears, it will never happen.

But it did- with the help of a great production team, Warner Records UK and not least Neil’s very helpful organisation in California.”
– Ben Whalley (Director)

I have a lot(!) of Neil Young documentaries/films/concert footage lying around, and this is the best of it all (…no, it was not me who uploaded it on YouTube, thanks to the original uploader). Neil Young really opens up and the live footage is spectacular. Young is very much aware of his “difficult” personality, his quest for great art is his most important task in life. The film explores how Young’s unflinching dedication to the muse has created an impressive body of work and bruised a lot of people along the way. But he is also a warm and funny person. This docu was also shown in the American Masters series on PBS in the US.

The film ends with Neil Young playing an anti-Bush anthem to a Republican audience in the South, still refusing to be denied.

BBC Neil Young documentary – Don’t Be Denied:

– Hallgeir

Concert films, Film, Willie Nelson

Video of the day: Willie Nelson The Big Six-0 concert 1993


willie six

In 1993, Willie Nelson joined with his friends for a fantastic birthday concert with Paul Simon, Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, Kris Kristofferson, Marty Stuart, B.B. King, Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Edie Brickell and Neil Young.

we get  Willie Nelson and a dazzling array of stars for a superb birthday concert, celebrating the life and music of one America’s most popular singer/songwriters. Filled with power-packed performances, unforgettable songs and candid interviews with Willie and many of the superstars he’s influenced! It was out on VHS and Laserdisc but has not been released on DVD (yet…)

The concert film also has statements and messages from his friends, like Lesley Ann Warren, Sydney Pollack, Dennis Hopper and Lou Diamond Phillips and Bill Clinton, all talking about the man and artist. The songs are wonderful in this big party for Willie Nelson.

Set-list:

  1. Graceland – Willie Nelson and Paul Simon
  2. Whiskey River — Willie Nelson
  3. Getting Over You — Willie Nelson and Bonnie Raitt
  4. Seven Spanish Angels — Ray Charles and Willie Nelson
  5. Pancho and Lefty – Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan
  6. Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys — Willie Nelson and Waylon Jenning
  7. On The Road Again — Willie Nelson
  8. Song for You — Ray Charles
  9. Old OUtlaws Like Us — Travis Tritt
  10. How Do You Feel About Fooling Around? — Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson
  11. Way More’s Blues — Marty Stuart & Waylon Jennings
  12. Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line — Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, Marty Stuart
  13. Night Life — Bonnie Raitt and B.B. King
  14. Funny How Time Slips Away — Lyle Lovett
  15. Crazy — EmmyLou Harris
  16. Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain — Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Edie Brickell
  17. Valentine — Willie Nelson
  18. Are There Any More Real Cowboys? — Willie Nelson and Neil Young
  19. Hard Times, Come Again No More — Bob Dylan
  20. American Tune — Willie Nelson and Paul Simon
  21. Always On My Mind — Willie Nelson
  22. Whiskey River — Willie Nelson and Family, Don Was and the Healing Hands of Time Band

– Hallgeir