Posted By Dooley on February 21, 2009

It’s not surprising that the movie Cadillac Records^W wasn’t a huge box office hit, but I personally thought it was a fantastic movie. Today’s movie crowds are far more accustomed to fast paced, action packed, special effects loaded fare than this movie offers up.

I’ve read just about every book ever written on blues history and, in my opinion at least, Cadillac Records takes a superb look at one of the most important periods of our cultural and artistic history. For many people, such as my adult daughter, who have an interest in various kinds of music, but yet have no prior knowledge of blues or it’s history, the movie is a pleasant and educational experience. That is the real importance of the movie Cadillac Records.

Movies that manage to entertain people while preserving our national or even our world heritage are special works of art. Far too many movies about our history are biased one way or another and so they fail to convey the reality of the subject they are covering. Cadillac Records manages to show us, in a reasonably accurate and entertaining fashion, what was happening around the Chicago blues scene of the 1940′s and ’50′s and then allows us to form our own opinions about the characters and events in the story. I like that.

Watching the movie, it’s easy to see that the actors, producers and directors approached this movie more as a labor of love than just another chance at creating a box office smash hit. From the soundtrack musician’s playing style, to the wardrobe, the casting and right through to the nuances that the actors provided for their characters, you could feel the devotion of everyone to the project. So while the investors may never recoup their original investment, they have given us a priceless piece of cultural history wrapped up in a pleasing and entertaining package that will pay dividends to the blues community for many years to come.

Category: blues-views-blogs | Comments Off
Tags: blues music, cadillac records, chess records, chicago, movies

Posted By Dooley on February 6, 2009

It’s amazing really when you look at the journey that blues music has taken throughout its history. Pure blues music is an art form that has either directly spawned or had a major influence on much of what is popular music today. From its humble beginnings in the Mississippi delta region of the 1920′s through it’s eventual migration to the rough and tumble Chicago nightclubs of the 40′s and 50′s and its subsequent influence on the explosive launch of the British Invasion^W of the 1960′s, American blues music has influenced a lot of people along the way, and it has influenced a lot of the music we hear today.

In the beginning, about the only way anyone ever heard blues music was if they happened to come into contact with one of the hard scrabble traveling musicians who rode the rails, walked the dirt roads, or traveled by horseback throughout the Mississippi river delta region. These musicians earned their keep by entertaining the hard working and hard playing black share croppers and occasionally the white land owners of the region.

During the late 1930′s and the early 1940′s the deep south became dotted with small, low power, rural radio stations. These stations provided a very real and necessary service to these small communities by providing them with essential news, weather and important announcements. It wasn’t long before some enterprising radio promoter decided that having some of the local entertainers on the air just after the noon news would entice people to listen to the show during their lunch break and the radio station could sell more advertising. Sure enough, local grocery stores and flour mills jumped at the chance to promote their products on these radio shows. Live blues radio was born. Being heard live on the radio daily was a huge help to the performers. They could plug their own appearances during the show and this in turn brought larger crowds to their weekend performances and helped put much needed money in their pockets.

It wasn’t long before small record companies like Sun Studio^W in Memphis, TN were taking chances on these artists and then promoting their recordings to radio stations everywhere. The blues was on the move. By the late 1940′s and early 1950′s blues music was being heard on radio stations throughout America. There was, however, an ominous cloud on the horizon. Its name was ‘rock-and-roll’. Sure, it was born of the blues, but it was a different critter all together.

Just when it seemed the great blues artists of the 40′s where about to pass into oblivion, some hip young cats in England with names like Mick Jagger^W, Mick Fleetwood^W, Peter Green^W, and Eric Burdon^W began to get their hands on some of the worn original recordings of guys with names like Howlin' Wolf^W, Muddy Waters^W, John Lee Hooker^W and Jimmy Reed^W. The inspiration provided by these records kicked off the much vaunted British Invasion and the rest, as they say, is history. The blues lived to fight again.

So let’s flash back for a second and imagine what might have happened if somewhere about 1938, some high tech, caffeine crazed geek walks into a fish fry or barn dance where Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters was laying down some really wicked blues licks to the hoots and shouts and stompin’ feet of a few dozen stoked up party goers. The crowd watches as our intrepid geek plugs in his laptop, patches directly into the soundboard and begins broadcasting this small rural party live via the internet to people all over the world. Different story, no?

Well, today we do have the ability to walk into a venue, plug in a board patch and begin a live broadcast from anywhere in the world to everywhere else in the world, all at the speed of light. What’s more, we still have some incredibly talented blues artists banging out some smoking blues licks at fish fries, house parties and small blues clubs every night of the week. With the advent of streaming Internet radio and live Internet broadcast, the future of blues music is unlimited.

Now, artists can reach audiences with an interest in blues music 24 hours a day anywhere in the world and blues fans everywhere can access their favorite music anytime they want. It’s all just a click away on the internet. I wonder what Leadbelly^W or Lightnin' Hopkins^W would think of all this?

Category: blues-views-blogs | Comments Off
Tags: Blues, chicago nightclubs, Delta blues, Eric Burdon, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Leadbelly, Lightin' Hopkins, Memphis TN, Mick Fleetwood, mick Jagger, Muddy Waters, Peter Green, Sun Studios, traveling musicians