Deep Blues (the movie)
Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage To The Crossroads
A Film By Robert Mugge
This 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.
(thru Blues Town)
Cast: :"Big" Jack Johnson Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes Junior Kimbrough Jessie Mae Hemphill R.L. Burnside Booker T. Laury
Lonnie Pitchford Jack Owens Bud Spires Jessie Mae's Fife and Drum Band Wade Walton Dave Stewart Robert Palmer - Narration
Tracks:
Memphis blues / Booker T. Laury
Jumper on the line / R.L. Burnside
Bouncing ball / Jessie Mae's Fife and Drum Band
You can talk about me / Jessie Mae Hemphill
Junior, I love you (All night long) / Junior Kimbrough
Heart broken man ; Ain't goin' to worry about tomorrow / Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes
Catfish blues ; Daddy, when is mama comin' home? / Big Jack Johnson
The devil ; Hard time killin' floor blues / Jack Owens and Bud Spires
Johnny stole an apple ; If I had possession over judgement day ; Come on in my kitchen / Lonnie Pitchford.