Customer Reviews

The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was fortunate enough to see this film at the 2000 Sundance Festival with a couple of musician friends. Leaving the theatre, we all agreed that it was the best single character documentary we had ever seen. Aiyana utelizes the help and stories from family and some very popular names in music to tell a wonderful life's story of her father, Jack Elliot, who may be the last true ramblin' man. He learned a great majority of his musical craft from spending time with Woody Guthrie. This was long after he had left his mother and father back in NYC. I can not possibly do the film justice by simply trying to summarize. There are only three things you need to know to make your decision by way of this armchair review. 1.) You will get to know the real Jack Elliot by way of many celebrities' stories as well as learning of Jack's own gentle and sometimes brutal honesty because that is what he was and is. 2.) Unless you have no hope of being anything but repulsed by hearing and learning about original and real "one man and his guitar" country / folk music, even though it is the foundation of where rock music comes from, you will like the music even more. And 3.) This film may violently burst the balloon of Bob Dylan fans that believe Dylan is a true original.

First of all - if you live outside of the U.S. and Canada, ignore Amazon[.com]'s claim that this is a Region 1 CD. It's Region 0 or Region Free if you will, and it plays beautifully anywhere in the world. Yes, it really does play beautifully. If you find any joy whatsoever in American folk or country music and you're interested in both the people as well as the music side of things, there probably isn't a DVD anywhere you'll appreciate owning more. There are white folk and country musicians galore in the U.S., but Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a step apart from all of them. Why? Well, he's the real thing. When we think of other names associated with white folk music - Pete Seeger, maybe, or over on the other much more commercial end of things, folks like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, they all were great talents who reproduced folk music, not people who sang the songs they lived. Please don't interpret this as a bad shot at these folks. One thinks of Studs Terkel's introduction at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival: "Whenever you see a young banjo player anywhere in the country, with a banjo waist high, head back, Adam's apple bobbing, you can say like Kilroy, Pete Seeger has been there." That's one legacy in American folk music, one of a great man who went forth, learned the songs of his land and brought them to us. Our debt to Pete Seeger is great. Ramblin' Jack Elliott is the other side of that coin. He went out and learned the land and then learned to sing its songs but as an expression of his own life. He made the land his own, thus, by their very nature, the songs too became his own, although he wrote nary a one of them. This wonderful story of America singing out through one of its really great bards, minstrels and troubadours is joyous indeed. There are of course some other points made to a lesser extent in the film and to a greater extent in the promotional material. It's true that Ramblin' Jack spent five years on the road with his mentor, Woody Guthrie, and that Bobby Zimmermann aka Bob Dylan spent a good bit of time with his mentor, Ramblin' Jack. People like to raise Dylan's name in connection with this film, although it's largely irrelevant. Ramblin' Jack handles the idea himself in a black-and-white interview from the 1960s, when Dylan still was new on the block: "Hell, I've been singin' like Bob Dylan for 20 years now." The film was made by Ramblin' Jack's daughter Aiyana, and much is made of daughter's search for her father, but that really isn't the focal point of the film. That is the big slice of America that Ramblin' Jack is and was. If think you know Woody Guthrie's song "This Land is Your Land," take a good look at this film. Afterward, you'll understand it much better. With Ramblin' Jack in mind, you might even switch the lyrics a bit: "This Man is Your Land ..."

This film is a fascinating character study and a touching look at the personal price people can pay for going their own way. Seeing the filmmaker, Elliott's daughter, trying to connect with her father while profiling him, is both sad and inspiring. The essence of the film seems to be summed up by Dave Van Ronk who tells Aiyana that he and countless others are grateful that Elliott roamed around, making music and being a folk treasure, but recognizes that his daughter never really had a father as a result. Her loss was our gain.

What a treat! True, the film could have been developed more more professionally. True, there were too many shots of whiny ex-wives. And a psychoanalyst might have a field day with this film: Jack's aunt describes Jack's mom in uncomplimentary terms, to say the least. And maybe that's why Jack had so many different wives and girlfriends.

But what's important is that Aiyana Elliott did make a film, however flawed. Jack's not the type to dictate his memoirs. Without this video, we'd never have the opportunity to appreciate one man's fascinating life.

Born in Brooklyn to a doctor and a teacher, Jack always knew he wanted to be a cowboy. I was surprised to see so many home movies still preserved -- but there was Jack, galloping around on an imaginary horse. At age fifteen Jack ran away to join the rodeo. He returned to finish high school, most reluctantly, and then assumed his new identity of cowboy and folk singer.

Very few people make such a break from their childhoods and create their own identity from scratch. Even fewer live as free spirits. Jack was made for, and shaped by, an era when young boys could run off and join the rodeo without getting anybody arrested. He could watch cowboy movies and meet real cowboys in Madison Square Garden.

Jack deserves a video just for the way he lived his life. The music is frosting on the cake, and very thick frosting it is, too.

Aiyana initially wants to know her dad and have at least one conversation with him. One of the strongest moments comes when Arlo Guthrie urges her to give up her quest. Maybe it's not for you to know, he says. There's a bit of irony here: Woodly Guthrie was Jack Elliott's mentor and now his son Arlo mentors Jack's daughter, if only briefly.

Jack Elliott wanted to do things his way, even if his way may seem difficult, even self-destructive, to an outsider. He was too "disorganized" to attract a top-quality manager. Norman Leventhal, who managed many folk singers (including the Weavers) explained: You'd spend a long time setting up a deal, and then Jack couldn't be found.

Because Jack doesn't talk -- apparently to anyone, not just his daughter -- we'll never know how he felt as he ventured around the country during those years. Did he ever get frustrated or sad or discouraged? Maybe he buried his feelings so he could keep going. Maybe he never had many bad days: he's certainly one of the most cheerful, gregarious characters ever captured on film. Too much introspection would have driven him off the road.

As one interviewee says, maybe Jack could have settled down into a house with a "normal" family. Maybe he would have been happy. But he wouldn't have been Jack. I don't think he would have been happy, either. Being somewhat of a wanderer myself, I believe some people are made to keep moving, and they're miserable if they force themselves to settle too quickly.

I'm not musically expert enough to evaluate Jack's talent. His sound isn't as strong or individual as, say, Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson, both of whom appear in the film. But he's got intensity and feeling. And he never stopped traveling, singing and learning.

The video ends with Ramblin Jack accepting a national arts award from President Clinton, just after he had won a grammy for his first studio album. A fictional movie with a lead character like Jack and an ending like this one would be dismissed as a sappy fairy tale with a Hollywood ending. The charm of this video is that, on the contrary, it's very very real.

I bought this after seeing Jack in concert in the back of a small pub in Ireland. He talked more than he played music but it didn't matter. We were well entertained no matter what he did. But I came away wanting to know more about him. I bought this dvd figuring it would be just a general documentary about him like so many other films about musicians - a general overview kind of thing. But what I got was a beautifully made, sometimes bittersweet, film about a man who is a legand, but only to those who are in the know.
I highly recommend this to anyone who's interested in American folk music and American history.

This DVD is indeed an incredible account of an incredible man. It is true that Aiyanna Elliott seems to spend much of the film either refusing to understand or refusing to forgive her father for his shortcomings as a Dad, but she makes it clear in the closing moments that she loves him for being Ramblin' Jack nonetheless.

I think the most important part of this film is the importance given to Jack's influence on Bob Dylan. Indeed, in Dylan's 'Chronmciles: Volume 1' autobiography, he readily admits to being jealous of Jack from the beginning, perhaps contributing to his later masking of Elliott's influence altogether.

This documentary is absolutely, unquestionably essential for any fan of Jack, of Dylan, of Woody Guthrie or of the genres that these people are part of. Jack is a gargantuan figure in the history of folk, rock and country music. Without him there would be no Dylan, no Rolling Stones, no Jackson Browne or anyone else of that ilk as we know them. There has certainly been no finer guitar player in folk music, and I would refute claims that Jack was show up when alongside Johnny Cash.

As a footnote, I should add that Ramblin' Jan (billed in the film as the only woman to succesfully encourage Jack to settle down) died of liver failure two years after the release of this film. Jan had been Jack's road manager in recent years and, upon hearing of her death, Elliott asked Garrick Rawlings - his support act for a show that night - whether he would become his road manager. Typical Jack, and typical of the bizarre nature of Elliott's life that Rawlings accepted - virtually giving up a blossoming career as a performer - and still manages Jack today.

A great video, but be warned: Apparently, there's more than one version of this DVD in circulation. I bought this through Amazon after viewing it on a Netflix DVD. The DVD I bought (and enjoy) doesn't have the short film or the option to hear Ramblin' Jack's commentary on the video. In fact, where the Netflix DVD ended with Jack advising young folks to whittle (as one reviewer notes), this one doesn't -- it shows Jack and "Ramblin' Jan" riding horses along the beach with Aiyana's voiceover. It obviously is a re-edited version -- although why they removed the additional materials, I don't know.

Recently, in a DVD review of the film documentary about 1960's folk legend Bob Dylan's mid-career crisis, "Bob Dylan: After the Crash: 1966-78", I noted, in passing, that folk guitarist Tom Paley (who was prominently featured in that film) and his group, The New Lost City Ramblers, were already waiting at the gates of Greenwich Village when the hordes of young folk revivalists started to arrive. The folk artist under review, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, in this very personal film documentary directed by his daughter, Ailaya Elliott, was also waiting there for them. Or, as the film makes clear, he was at least rumored to be waiting for them. This almost two hour bittersweet valentine to the now grand old man of the folk music revival (in 2000) is the story of why he was waiting for them, and more importantly, why they were searching for him as an agent of "authentic" American roots music.

As has also been mentioned, seemingly endlessly, in this space in many reviews over the past year or so about the male division of the folk revival of the 1960's I have tried to explore, why or why not, certain talented folk singers never reached the status of Bob Dylan, the acknowledged "king of the hill" of that revival. From the first paragraph we already know that Ramblin' Jack was already on the scene. Moreover, he had the pedigree that all aspiring folkies craved, including Dylan- physical links to the legendary Woody Guthrie the herald of the previous generation of the folk troubadours from the dust bowl 1930's. Moreover Jack was a quick study, really wanted to expand the folk universe and, as this film also makes abundantly clear, he just plain liked the life style of the itinerant wanderer. So what gives?

Well, Jack just liked to keep wandering, and wandering in motion and speech and not getting attached, at least for long, to any one place person or thing. That, my friends, is the codified social genetic structure that some people live with as they try to reinvent themselves. In Jack's case from a nice Jewish city boy (the Brooklyn of the title of this review) to an old cowboy. This is hardly the first time that someone has turned their persona around in the whirlwind of the homeland of personal reinvention, America. However, it took something out of him, as he himself reflects on his life as he travels the roads back to the past (in an RV) with his ambivalent director daughter in tow.

But here is my take on why he was left seemingly behind in the mad whirl of the folk revival and its aftermath. He didn't move, like Dylan, either with the times or with his own drummer. He started out as a Woody acolyte, as did Dylan, but he wanted to preserve the purity of the Woody canon, intact. As a transmission belt from Woody to Dylan Ramblin' Jack performed a yeoman's service. But where is Jack's equivalent of not just "Song to Woody" but "Desolation Row", "Tangled Up In Blue", "Visions of Johanna", and so on. That said, this film is filled with various close-ups of Ramblin' Jack doing his unique covers of many songs, the usual rare film footage of the early days of the folk revival, of Jack Elliott and his family life and the usual "talking head" commentary from friends, lovers and folk colleagues that round out these kinds of efforts. This is a daughter's film, this is a folkie's film and this is a welcome addition to the growing body of visual tributes to American roots music and its practitioners. Kudos, Ailaya.

I thought this was an excellent retelling of R. Jack's life, music, and family...Lots of vintage videos of the beginning of the folk music and it's effect on us all

I guess I've been listening to Ramblin' Jack most of my life, beginning with some old Library of Congress LPs that my folks had lying around the house. Jack's wailing delivery of "Diamond Joe" sticks in my head like a good shot of malt liquor. As I watched this film and mulled over his old recordings, I couldn't help thinking that it's tough to separate the man from the myth. I suppose you can't blame him for capitalizing on his early association with Dylan, and the film makes sly reference to Jack's alleged influence on Dylan's music. He played with just about everybody who was anybody during the Great Folk Music Scare of the 1960s. Part poseur and part American original, he has come to represent everything that American folk-roots music stands for. Singer-songwriter Guy Clark's Workbench Songs (a 2006 Grammy nominee beaten by none other than Dylan himself) contains a recording of "Diamond Joe" dedicated to Ramblin' Jack. Like Clark, I can't help but feel respect and affection for the guy despite his bad pipes and his occasional hyperbole.