Blues America is a two hour documentary which was produced and directed by Mick Gold. It first aired on BBC Four in the UK on November 29, 2013. The last time I checked it had over 75,000 hits on YouTube. It is a well-crafted, deftly written and directed film. The documentary is divided into two parts; the first installment is entitled Woke up this Morning and part two is called Bright Lights Big City.

Blues America is an entertaining look at the quintessential American music, the blues. Blues music also represents one of this country’s most beloved and enduring exports. This export found its way into the eardrums of a sixty six year old British film maker. Gold is a former rock journalist for Cream, Melody Maker and Let it Rock magazines. Predictably, in this film, as in most references of blues in the general public forum, it is through the prism of Anglo rock music in which blues music is filtered.  

The entire presentation is narrated by rocker/rapper Huey Morgan. Morgan does an excellent job and makes the correct choice of not using voice inflections to editorialize the material presented in the film. His voice projects a detached objectivity which helps to give the film the gravitas the subject matter deserves.

Blues America weaves its narrative with the use of some spectacular archival footage and commentary by a variety of talking heads. For the most part, the contributions of all the participants were insightful and on point. The same old gang was on hand to share their perspective on this music. The predictable pontificators included Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt, Marshall Chess, Chuck D and others. Is there some kind of statute on the books where in the new millennium you can’t make a documentary film about blues anymore without Chuck D in the mix?

The film has some wonderful rare archival footage, some of which I have never seen. There is a clip of Sonny Boy Williamson 2 singing live and in living color at a King Biscuit Time Radio performance in front of a live audience in Helena, Arkansas, for instance.

A couple of interesting choices were the inclusion of young people making pre-war acoustic blues in the present, Jeron “Blind Boy” Paxton and a band called The Ebony Hillbillies. Their music and commentary were a refreshing sorbet from the classic-rockers’ commentary and showed how this timeless music can resonate with young people several decades later.   

That’s the good news. The bad news is that this film hitched its mule and plowed the same cliché ridden,   well worn, narrow furrow in which this music is almost always presented. By going down this same channel, the film maker further entrenched decades old historical revisionism and left out huge chunks of the fascinating history of this music. Blues came from Mississippi, moved to Chicago, was discovered by a handful of British rockers and the rest is history. That’s all folks.  Nothing more to see here.... This myth is so ubiquitous in the minds of many it has become fact. It just isn’t the truth.

The hinge and focal point of this narrative focuses on one single decade of the 20^th Century, you guessed, it, the 1960’s. Blues music, it seems can only be viewed through these purple haze colored glasses. It is this decade in which talking heads Maria Muldaur, Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal, as well as Richards and Raitt, were first exposed to blues music and got their start in the music business.  

There is a great deal of time spent discussing the “blues hunters” in this film. They went to the primitive, panther infested back woods of the Mississippi Delta in search of the next great discovery that they could pluck from poverty and put in front of white people to perform. These folklorists play an important part in the film, Blues America. The importance of these folklorists can’t be overstated. It is great to see this chapter of the blues story told in such a deft and insightful manner. The fact that the Lomax’s, Samuel B. Charters, Dick Waterman and others found these musicians, recorded them and put them in front of young audiences is essential to telling the story of the 60’s folk/blues revival, but not much beyond that. Lord have mercy, there is so much more beyond that.

Then with about fifteen minutes to go, the film finally races through the next five decades and covers the entire 80’s and 90’s blues revival and coalesces this chapter into a quick mention of Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the marketing of John Lee Hooker to yuppies. It also tells viewers that the inclusion of blues tunes in television commercials shows how much of a presence this music has in our lives.

The film’s narrow and misleading view of blues music can be encapsulated in a statement by Keith Richards when he said, “The trains all led that way,” referring to the southern migration of African-Americans to Chicago. For starters, getting an American geography and history lesson from Keith Richards might be problematic in and of its self. Richards later said about Chess Records that, “There was such a wealth of great material (coming out of Chess) that we (Mick Jagger and himself) never needed to look much further.” So I guess if Keith Richards didn’t feel he needed to explore this music beyond the Chess Records catalogue, then why should the filmmakers have any less of a myopic view of blues music.

Writers and blues historians Scott Barretta, Tony Russell, Mary Beth Hamilton, Elijia Wald, Gary Dean Wardlow and others make timely and insightful commentary. Yet how could a film entitled, Blues America be taken seriously without any mention of Saint Louis, Kansas City, Houston, Los Angeles, Oakland or even New Orleans and those cities’ contributions to this music.   

The migration from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas by African-Americans to north east cities such as New York and Philadelphia for instance isn’t mentioned in the film either. Then the filmmakers would have to discuss guitarists Tiny Grimes, Billy Butler and Bill Jennings. That wouldn’t fit here because the filmmakers would have to acknowledge that Grimes had recordings on the electric guitar in 1938, more than a decade before it is implied that Muddy Waters electrified the blues. I guess you can’t screw up a good story with the facts.

The migration of African-Americans from Louisiana, Oklahoma and, most importantly, Texas to California and the music they brought with them is not mentioned. This constitutes at least as large of a migration as the Delta to Chicago blues trail. The migration took place in and around the same time and for the exact same reasons, better economic and living conditions.

The biggest and most important blues recording and performing hub, at least on par with Chicago, is Los Angeles. The output of L.A. based labels such as Imperial, Modern, RPM, Swingtime, Alladin, Hollywood and Specialty was staggering. So West Coast based blues men like Charles Brown, Floyd Dixon, Lloyd Glenn, Roy Milton, Joe Liggins,  Jimmy McCracklin, Roy Hawkins, Amos Milburn, Big Jay McNeely, Joe Houston, Johnny Heartsman, Lowell Fulson, Pee Wee Crayton, Percy Mayfield, Jimmy Liggins, Oscar Moore, Jesse Thomas, Roy Gaines, Johnny Moore and others weren’t mentioned in this film.

Many of these musicians were popular entertainers in their own time. Their music could be heard in jukeboxes across America. The problem of course is that the Rolling Stones never heard this music, so I guess it never existed.

The fact that there was no mention of Johnny Otis and Maxwell Davis is a huge oversight. I suppose if Willie Dixon and Ike Turner could be left out of this film, Otis’ and Davis’ exclusion shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. 

How serious of a look at Blues in America can you have without a single mention of T-Bone Walker? I’m not kidding. No mention either of Lightnin’ Hopkins who is widely considered the most prolific blues recording artist of all time. Hopkins remained popular with African-American audiences throughout the 50’s and into the early 60’s. He is the undisputed king of the country blues idiom in the post war era. I suppose since he wasn’t “discovered” by northern, white academies, he isn’t worthy of even a footnote in Blues America.

The film leaves one with the impression that there wasn’t a blues guitarist and singer that worked out of Texas between Blind Lemon Jefferson and Stevie Ray Vaughan. I would think a mention of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Albert Collins, Freddy King, Jimmy Vaughan, Roy Gaines, Clarence Holliman or Wayne Bennett is in order. I suppose if you can do a documentary film called Blues America and not mention Walker or Hopkins, what chance do those cats have of having even a single reference in the production? After all if you were to mention Gaines, Holliman and Bennett then the film would have to do a segment on Bobby “Blue” Bland, who just happens to be one of the biggest and most influential blues artists of all time. At this point, the film makers probably would have to mention one of the most prolific recording studios in blues history, Don Robey’s Peacock Studios. Hundreds of popular and iconic blues songs were recorded there, including one of Bland’s biggest hits, his version of T-Bone Walker’s Stormy Monday. Houston, we have a problem.

It is at about an hour and forty eight minutes into this film when B.B. King is finally discussed and a short awkward tribute is given to the King of the Blues. The segment feels like, ‘Oh crap we almost forgot B.B. He was born in Mississippi and he plays guitar, so we better make mention of him quick.’

In the first installment of Blues America the filmmakers laid down a huge slab of information on which to construct this narrative and then didn’t bring enough lumber to build on that broad based foundation. It is tantamount to naming a film Baseball America and then presenting a marvelous historical narrative on the National League Central Division and not mention there are any other franchises or players associated with any other division in major league baseball and then have old Australian Rugby players as your chief contributing commentators.   

The filmmaker’s interpretation of blues music has much to do with the need to project this art form as being “primitive” and “simple.” These words were sprinkled throughout the film to describe this music. The concept that African-Americans can invent and then develop a musical dialect of immense  sophistication, say in the vein of the music made by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers or T-Bone Walker for example, doesn’t comport with the racial stereotypes perpetuated by the filmmakers of Blues America. Apparently, the primitive Mississippi agrarian turned Chicago, street tough is all that’s needed to explain the blues man in America.

Granted, two hours or twenty wouldn’t be enough time to travel down all of the blues highways, but it seemed as if the editorial decision was made to not even make an attempt. The real problem lies in the fact that there isn’t even a codicil mentioning the editorial decision to exclude any other aspect of the blues in America in the film, Blues America.

In the opening of the film the narrator states, “This is the story....” No, it is one of the many stories of the blues. It is the same story we have heard before. Why shouldn’t the general public be largely disinterested in this music? The irony here is that the great curiosity and adventurous spirit to find the treasure of America’s cultural past by the folklorists, ethnomusicologists and writers that are documented in this film is used to bury even more of this rich history. There are many things to recommend about this film, it’s intellectual honesty just isn’t one of them.

Blues America is an almost flawlessly produced film. It is also a wonderfully paced, compelling documentary. It is a visually stunning look at an endlessly fascinating subject. In so many respects it is a marvelous presentation. This film is the product of some very talented, knowledgeable and scholarly people. So when I cry ‘FOUL’, it isn’t that these folks didn’t know any better, it is because they did.

- David Mac