Studio: Sony Music Release Date: 07/22/2003 Rating: NrThis superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country. What Arkansas native and former Memphis stalwart Palmer knew, and Mugge captured on film, was that the blues was not only alive but still intimately woven into the daily lives of rural blacks.
Palmer, a former rock musician and Memphis Blues Festival cofounder best known for his bylines in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, had already chronicled the saga of Southern blues in his seminal book that provides the film’s title. He’s an astute guide, and Mugge underlines this role by pairing him with British rocker Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), whose avid interest in the music makes him an effective foil.
The film’s real triumph, however, rests in the team’s success in capturing modern day blues survivors and inheritors playing in the bars, juke joints, and barns of delta country. Palmer, who had returned several years earlier to the delta to capture these artists for his scrappy Fat Possum label, introduces us to the now-amplified but still elemental blues of R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes, and other keepers of the faith. Mugge, whose profiles of Al Green, Sonny Rollins, and other musicians probed their cultural and artistic contexts with intelligence and sensitivity, captures both the music and the milieu in crisp color footage. Deep Blues thus triumphs as a testament to the blues’ deep roots and an unintentional eulogy for Palmer, who would pass away in the mid-’90s just as the gut-bucket music of Burnside and Kimbrough served notice that the blues were alive and kicking. –Sam Sutherland
Buy “Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads” For Only $7.48
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Blues
May 5, 2010
#1
Deep Blues was refered to me by an artist who amazed me with his talent one night at the Aligator Soul in Everett WA. Ryan played delta blues very well, I saw several folks in the crowd stop eating their meal to listen to this man in his 30′s belting out the blues on his dobro. After his show I talked with him asking him how he came to know delta blues so well. He said he had watched “you see me laughing” and many video’s on blues but desired to see “Deep Blues”. As a blues artist and fan I had to have this video so I bought it, I have watched it several times over and will continue to draw from the rich history of where it started, learning from many of the artists the main stream has not heard of, simply put Deep Blues is a must for blues fans and aspiring artists alike it will help you keep the blues alive.
May 5, 2010
#2
Hippy-dufus journalist Robert Palmer & quasi-famous rocker Dave Stewart wander around the south in search of roots-blues and boy, do they ever find it! The music is sublime and when they get out of the way and let it speak for itself, the film soars. When they don’t, well…
May 5, 2010
#3
Over the past year or so I have spent some time in this space addressing the question of why various male folk performers like Jesse Winchester, Tom Rush, and Chris Smither, from the folk revival of the 1960′s,
did or did not become “king of the hill” in that genre.(I am in the process of doing the same for female folk singers as “queen of the hill”). I have also addressed that same question, although not as extensively, concerning the various 1950′s rock `n’ roll artists who were left behind when rock exploded on the scene. I thought I had covered so many of the artists from the blues scene that I did not think that I needed to pose the question in that genre. Apparently I was wrong as this well done blues documentary, “Deep Blues”, directed by Robert Mugge and narrated by the famed blues musicologist Robert Palmer poses that very question point blank at those left behind down at the lesser levels of the blues pantheon.
This film spends no little time on setting the framework for its above-mentioned premise. That question, as the documentary unfolds, keeps honing in on who has kept the blues tradition alive back down at the roots-mainly in the rural South among the black agricultural laborers, small town black entertainment entrepreneurs and others who want to continue the blues tradition of the Saturday night “juke joint”. In short this film is a labor of love by Mugge and Palmer in honor of those who have kept the blues tradition alive, mainly as a labor of their love. Although this film was produced in 1991 in the year 2009 the same question could be fruitfully posed about who has kept the faith down home. Although there are periodic revivals of the blues around such events as Martin Scorsese’s six-part PBS blues documentary of 2003 the hard truth is that the blues, as a genre, is not generally a paying proposition these days. So it has to be love of this art form that drives the work.
A number of lesser known blues performers performing their work, some that I had heard of previously others that I have not, form the core of this film. After viewing the performances I come way, once again, with that nagging question about why some artists “made it” and others did not. All blues aficionados are familiar with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, Memphis Minnie, Etta James,”Big Mama” Thornton and the like. But what about those on the “chittlin’ circuit”- the likes of Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt Barnes, Big Jack Johnson and Lonnie Pitchford? I thought not. Some decided for personal reasons to stay put, some were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some are merely imitative of greater artists and some are just flat out not good enough for the “bigs”. Nevertheless this is their story. Kudos to Mugge and Palmer for telling it.
May 5, 2010
#4
This film should have been great. The list of musicians profiled gave me high expectations. However, it suffers on mainly two fronts: first, the filming is amateurish. Although the sound quality is tremendous, the way scenes and interviews were filmed and edited was stale and uninventive. Compare this to “You See Me Laughin’” and you’ll see a vast difference in the quality. This documentary was simply not filmed or edited well. Some of the best parts of this film were the outtakes that were in the “extras” section of the DVD. Dave Stewart, throughout the film, was an annoyance, yet in the outtakes, he made a solid contribution. The second weakness, unfortunately, was Robert Palmer. In spite of his experience, credentials, and personal relationships with some of the folks in this film, his interviews were simply boring. Not the fault of his subjects, but rather he simply makes too many inane comments and asks vapid, silly questions. Simply put, he made a film with potential into a mediocrity. Too bad. Avoid this film and pick up “You See Me Laughin.”
May 6, 2010
#5
For someone wanting to get a feel for some relatively modern Delta blues this is a great documentary. Lots of gritty feel to the setting and characters here. The tracks were recorded with great attention to quality. Of especial interest is the portion about RL Burnside as this was his re-discovery! His music career really took off from here! Also, Jesse Mae Hemphill’s solo performance is absolute magic, very powerful.
If you like the blues you can’t go wrong with this DVD.