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The Blues is a 2003 documentary film series produced by Martin Scorsese, dedicated to the history of blues music. In each of the seven episodes, a different director explores a stage in the development of the blues. The series originally aired on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States. [1]
| Feel Like Going Home | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Martin Scorsese |
| Written by | Peter Guralnick |
| Produced by | Sam Pollard / Daphne McWilliams |
| Starring | Ali Farka Touré Corey Harris Salif Keita Son House Taj Mahal John Lee Hooker Keb' Mo' Willie King |
| Cinematography | Arthur Jafa |
| Edited by | David Tedeschi |
Release date | September 28, 2003 |
Director Martin Scorsese pays tribute to the Delta blues, tracing the roots of the music by traveling through the state of Mississippi with the musician Corey Harris and then traveling to West Africa. Willie King, Taj Mahal, Othar Turner and Ali Farka Touré give performances of early Delta blues songs, along with rare archival film of Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker.
| The Soul of a Man | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Wim Wenders |
| Written by | Wim Wenders |
| Produced by | Alex Gibney |
| Narrated by | Laurence Fishburne |
| Cinematography | Lisa Rinzler |
| Edited by | Mathilde Bonnefoy |
| Music by | Skip James Blind Willie Johnson J. B. Lenoir |
Release date | September 29, 2003 |
Written and directed by Wim Wenders, the film explores the musical careers of blues musicians Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir.
| The Road to Memphis | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Richard Pearce |
| Written by | Robert Gordon |
| Produced by | Robert Kenner |
| Starring | B. B. King Bobby Rush Rosco Gordon Ike Turner |
| Cinematography | Richard Pearce |
| Edited by | Charlton McMillan |
Release date | September 30, 2003 |
Directed by Richard Pearce, this episode focuses on the Beale Street music scene, particularly three Memphis blues musicians with different levels of acclaim: B. B. King, Rosco Gordon and Bobby Rush. [2]
| Warming by the Devil's Fire | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Charles Burnett |
| Written by | Charles Burnett |
| Produced by | Margaret Bodde Alex Gibney / Daphne McWilliams |
| Starring | Tommy Hicks Nathaniel Lee Jr. |
| Cinematography | John N. Demps |
| Edited by | Edwin Santiago |
| Music by | Stephen James Taylor |
Release date | October 1, 2003 |
Written and directed by Charles Burnett, this film presents the tale of a young boy traveling to Mississippi to visit relatives. He is caught between the pressures of his religious mother and gospel music, and the eagerness of his blues-loving uncle. The film includes performance by
| Godfathers and Sons | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Marc Levin |
| Produced by | Daphne Pinkerson Marc Levin |
| Starring | Marshall Chess Chuck D |
| Cinematography | Mark Benjamin |
| Edited by | Bob Eisenhardt |
Release date | October 2, 2003 |
Director Marc Levin follows Marshall Chess as he remembers his father's contribution to Chicago blues history as the co-founder of Chess Records and his own production of the controversial album Electric Mud . He organizes a reunion of the musicians that made Electric Mud to record new versions of Muddy Waters's blues standard "Mannish Boy", with contributions by hip hop artists, including Chuck D of Public Enemy, Common & Kyle Jason.
| Red, White and Blues | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Mike Figgis |
| Produced by | Louise Hammar Shirani Sabratnam |
| Cinematography | Barry Ackroyd Mike Eley John Lynch Stephen Standen |
| Edited by | David Martin Nigel Karikari |
Release date | October 3, 2003 |
Directed by Mike Figgis, this episode is dedicated to blues culture in Britain and to the effect of the British Invasion on American blues culture. It contains footage from a jam session and interviews with the musicians Jeff Beck, Van Morrison and others.
| Piano Blues | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Clint Eastwood |
| Written by | Peter Guralnick |
| Produced by | Clint Eastwood Bruce Ricker |
| Starring | Marcia Ball Dave Brubeck Ray Charles Pinetop Perkins,... |
| Cinematography | Vic Losick |
| Edited by | Joel Cox, Gary Roach |
Release date | October 4, 2003 |
Directed by Clint Eastwood, this episode is dedicated to blues music played on the piano. Eastwood, a piano player and accomplished composer, interviews such key figures as Dr. John, Ray Charles, Jay McShann (shown on the DVD cover), and Pinetop Perkins.
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos that reflect characteristics of the human singing voice. It typically involves playing the guitar in the traditional position with the use of a slide fitted on one of the guitarist's fingers. The slide may be a metal or glass tube, such as the neck of a bottle. The term bottleneck was historically used to describe this type of playing. The strings are typically plucked while the slide is moved over the strings to change the pitch. The guitar may also be placed on the player's lap and played with a hand-held bar.
McKinley Morganfield, known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-World War II blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues". His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude".
Muddy Waters (1913–1983) was an American blues artist who is considered a pioneer of the electric Chicago blues and a major influence on the development of blues and rock music. He popularized several early Delta blues songs, such as "Rollin' and Tumblin'", "Walkin' Blues", and "Baby, Please Don't Go", and recorded songs that went on to become blues standards, including "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Mannish Boy", and "Got My Mojo Working". During his recording career from 1941 to 1981, he recorded primarily for two record companies, Aristocrat/Chess and Blue Sky; they issued 62 singles and 13 studio albums.
Chester Arthur Burnett, better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, was an American blues singer and guitarist. He was at the forefront of transforming acoustic Delta blues into electric Chicago blues, and over a four-decade career, recorded blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and psychedelic rock. He is regarded as one of the most influential blues musicians of all time.
Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but is performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of African Americans of the first half of the twentieth century. Key features that distinguish Chicago blues from the earlier traditions, such as Delta blues, is the prominent use of electrified instruments, especially the electric guitar, and especially the use of electronic effects such as distortion and overdrive.
Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
Electric Mud is the fifth studio album by Muddy Waters, with members of Rotary Connection playing as his backing band. Released in 1968, it imagines Muddy Waters as a psychedelic musician. Producer Marshall Chess suggested that Muddy Waters record it in an attempt to appeal to a rock audience.
Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.
"You Shook Me" is a 1962 blues song recorded by Chicago blues artist Muddy Waters. Willie Dixon wrote the lyrics and Earl Hooker provided the instrumental backing; the song features Waters' vocal in unison with Hooker's slide-guitar melody. "You Shook Me" became one of Muddy Waters' most successful early-1960s singles and has been interpreted by several blues and rock artists.
"Mannish Boy" is a blues standard written by Muddy Waters, Mel London, and Bo Diddley. First recorded in 1955 by Waters, it serves as an "answer song" to Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man", which was in turn inspired by Waters' and Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man". "Mannish Boy" features a repeating stop-time figure on one chord throughout the song.
The American Folk Blues Festival was a music festival that toured Europe as an annual event for several years beginning in 1962. It introduced audiences in Europe, including the UK, to leading blues performers of the day such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson, most of whom had never previously performed outside the US. The tours attracted substantial media coverage, including TV shows, and contributed to the growth of the audience for blues music in Europe.
J. B. Lenoir was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter, active in the Chicago blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s.
At Newport 1960 is a live album by Muddy Waters recorded during his performance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 3, 1960. With his longtime backup band, Muddy Waters plays a mix of his older popular tunes and some newer compositions. Chess Records released the album in the United States on November 15, 1960.
"Hoochie Coochie Man" is a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and first recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954. The song makes reference to hoodoo folk magic elements and makes novel use of a stop-time musical arrangement. It became one of Waters' most popular and identifiable songs and helped secure Dixon's role as Chess Records' chief songwriter.
Godfathers and Sons is a documentary directed by Marc Levin. The film is part of The Blues, a seven part PBS series, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer.
Sammy David Lawhorn was an American Chicago blues guitarist, best known as a member of Muddy Waters's band. He also accompanied many other blues musicians, including Otis Spann, Willie Cobbs, Eddie Boyd, Roy Brown, Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker, James Cotton and Junior Wells.
Samuel Julian Lay was an American drummer and vocalist who performed from the late 1950s as a blues and R&B musician alongside Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Paul Butterfield, and many others. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
Johnny "Big Moose" Walker was an American Chicago blues and electric blues pianist and organist. He worked with many blues musicians, including Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Lowell Fulson, Choker Campbell, Elmore James, Earl Hooker, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins and Son Seals.
Calvin "Fuzz" Jones was an American electric blues bassist and singer. He worked with many blues musicians, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, the Legendary Blues Band, Mississippi Heat, James Cotton, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Little Walter and Elmore James.