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96 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Black history , beautifully told!, November 9, 2002
This review is from: Blues Masters - The Essential History of the Blues (DVD)
This documentary does what so many others on Black Music failed to do, it discusses the music in the context of black struggle in America. The reason this DVD was such a breath of fresh air to me is because I purchased it after returning a documentary (American Roots Music) that did the exact opposite. Where American Roots Music teases the viewer with one or two seconds of it's "rare footage", Blues Masters shows rare sessions with Son House, Leadbelly, Bessie Smith and many more virtually uncut. Where American Roots Music attempts to handle the music as if it exists in a vacuum; Blues Masters doesn't separate the music from the people who created it. The latter even makes mention and shows footage of self-determined Black leaders such as Marcus Garvey and Father Divine, who both were very influential among common Black folks of the time. It discusses the "Racist Regime of America" and it's deep mistreatment of Blacks and alludes to the fact that this deep seated oppression and pain had to be an element of what actually drove Black folks to create the blues in the first place. This DVD is a must have. Buy two copies, just in case one of your friends decide to borrow it and never give it back.
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Going down to the River, May 8, 2006
This review is from: Blues Masters - The Essential History of the Blues (DVD)
This is an absolutely fantastic DVD of historic Blues performances. There are COMPLETE (not clips) song performances by many great Blues greats including Leadbelly, Son House, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and several others. The performance by Leadbelly is galvanizing. All of the clips are highly entertaining, many of them in unusual formats, such as the imaginative Jimmy Rushing dramatization of his song. Jazz-blues performances by performers such as Billie Holiday and Count Basie are also included. In between the performances, the narrator tells about key episodes in African-American history and the history of the Blues. Accompanying the narration are historic photos, video clips, and more music. As a college teacher, I find this an ideal video for classes on African-American culture and literature.
Unlike many documentaries, there are NO talking heads, NO pretentious "musicologists" boring us with their large vocabularies. The heart of this video is the music and the cultural background. Kudos to the producers of this excellent video. All producers of music history films should be forced to view this model music documentary.
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31 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horrendous, February 29, 2008
This review is from: Blues Masters - The Essential History of the Blues (DVD)
This is the worst Blues DVD I've ever seen. Many essential points to understanding the history of the Blues are missed: Mamie Smith recording the first Black vocal song with the word "Blues" that became a huge hit ("Crazy Blues"), the subsequent popularity of Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson becoming the first male Blues star in the Race Records industry, the birth of electric Blues that was necessary when blacks moved north and needed to amplify music in order to be heard in huge crowds, the birth of Rock 'N' Roll around 1954, and the Country Blues revival during the early 1960's. Facets of the terrible documentary which should have been taken out were the footage of Kennedy during the Jimmy Witherspoon song, which was simply idiotic and without reason (not to mention the documentary's failure to state that Witherspoon was covering a song Bessie Smith had popularized), the excessive talk of Blues constantly being associated with the struggle for Civil Rights (many Bluesmen's daily activities were not in line at all with morality), the mentioning of the Beatles and Michael Jackson being heavily influenced by Blues (this is plain absurd), and associating Aretha Franklin with Sarah Vaughan (they were separated by three decades). The Muddy Waters footage was terrible, as they selected one of the worst Muddy performances I've ever seen. There was no effort to fix up the sound quality of not just the performances, but also the narrator's statements, despite the DVD coming out in 1993, and then being touched up during the current decade. In addition, Babe Stovall was not a hugely popular performer during the 1920's, as the DVD states. The closing footage of B.B. King is from the early 1960's, so why was it shown after the narrator talked about B.B. being the representative of the Blues in today's world? Also, Sleepy John Estes was not hugely popular in the 1940's and 1950's, and Elmore James died in the 1960's (instead of being a huge star throughout the decade, as the DVD states). From top to bottom, this is the worst Blues documentary ever. For all of you who claim to know about Blues and give this terrible work 5 stars, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
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