Tag Archives: Film

Film, Otis Redding, Soul, Stax

Documentary: Otis Redding – Soul Ambassador

soul ambassador

Otis Redding Soul Ambassador. Documentary from the BBC.

First-ever TV documentary about the legendary soul singer Otis Redding, following him from childhood and marriage to the Memphis studios and segregated Southern clubs where he honed his unique stage act and voice. Through unseen home movies, the film reveals how Otis’s 1967 tour of Britain dramatically changed his life and music.

After bringing soul to Europe he returned to conquer America,first with the ‘love-crowd’ at the Monterey Festival and then with Dock of the Bay, which topped the charts only after his death at just 26. Includes rare and unseen performances, intimate interviews with Otis’s wife and daughter, and with original band members Steve Cropper and Booker T Jones. Also featured are British fans whose lives were changed by seeing him, among them Rod Stewart, Tom Jones and Bryan Ferry.

– Hallgeir

Bob Dylan, Film

Top 3 use of Bob Dylan songs in movies

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Bob Dylan is a pop culture icon.His songs (as either writer/composer or performer) are used in close to 400 movies and TV shows. Bob Dylan has been very liberal with his licensing (not like the Beatles or Tom Waits). The rules are, no cover songs, no performances, but scenes where the music of Bob Dylan is used in a way that enhances the action and/or mood. These are my three favorites.

Tell us about what you favorite Dylan cues in movies are (in the comments).

The best western ever made (some days I think it is the best film, period.) This is classic!

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1) Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid – Knockin on Heaven’s Door (starts about 1.50 in,but it is so good you should see it all):

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Blues, Film, Muddy Waters

Chicago Blues 1972 documentary

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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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“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).

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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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“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

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It is fascinating and educational with a fantastic soundtrack.

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

– Hallgeir