Customer Reviews

M For Mississippi - A Road Trip Through The Birthplace Of The Blues

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This DVD and accompanying CD from Roger Stolle of Cat Head and Jeff Konkell of Broke And Hungry Records, two young blues fans, captures perfectly the deep blues culture that exists in Mississippi today hidden from obvious view. The DVD allows you to see the Mississippi landscape and to witness the sheer quirkiness of the performing acoustic blues artists and the environment in which they live. There is brilliant music from T Model Ford, Pat Thomas, Robert Belfour, Terry 'Harmonica' Bean amongst many others. A rich and rewarding DVD showing a culture that still exists below the radar. This DVD gives you a glimpse of how the blues was in its early years in Mississippi-entertainment for neighborhood folks in simple rural lives. Highly recommended!

I'm afraid that I completely disagree with the previous reviewer's negative take on this film. For starters, nowhere in the title of the DVD or its description does it say anything about "country blues," so to compare the artists in this film to Blind Willie McTell or Johnny Shines, both of whom I also love, is like comparing apples to oranges. The film was about the blues as it's currently played today in Mississippi, where a matter of a few miles can result in huge stylistic differences. Several of the musicians in the film weren't even from the Delta but from the hill country of northern Mississippi where a unique style of blues has flourished for many decades. It is characterized by its raw, stripped down, repetitve riffing which, in the hands of its best known practitioners, Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside, is almost hypnotic in its simplicity but to those unfamiliar with the style can sound sloppy and shambolic. Other musicians in the film may be past their prime but still offer insights into how and why they play the blues, which to me is worth seeing. I'll grant you that "Mr. Tater" had little to offer musically, but his appearance in the film is still worthwhile, as he is a regular fixture in Clarksdale and has the blues in his bones. My wife and I personally loved the performances of R.L. Boyce, Pat Thomas and (especially) L.C. Ulmer among others, but we like our blues rough and tumble. It's like the legendary Hound Dog Taylor used to say, "When I die, they'll say 'he couldn't play s***, but he sure made it sound good!" And that about says it all!

(Please note that the soundtrack can be purchased separately on CD. It has proven to be a big hit at parties and sitting around the campfire this past summer. Get them both and crank 'em up, but don't forget the whiskey!)

This an excellent film of the blues today in Mississippi--a group of blues fans spending a week in April 2008 getting together at the homes and jukejoints of the Delta,listening to the state of the blues today.
The film is well made,split screens and a mixture of color and b/w,sound is excellent.The stories and performances of the featured musicians are the basis of the film,some real characters here.
Bonus features are excellent,extended performances and deleted scenes.
"T-Model"Ford is excellent,performs a Chuck Berry tune without the vocal, because Chucks attorney would not allow it--if the British groups of the 60's hadn't performed his songs where would Chuck be today--sing the songs, spread the word.
Great effort by everybody involved in this release,anybody interested in the blues and music history should watch this--there may not be many more opportunites to see and hear this wonderful music--all will be left with is the recordings and the Mississippi Blues Trail Markers, great as all that is, the blues is a live experience--support this release, and go down to Mississippi,it is a beautiful state,my few visits have always been great.

You won't see anything like this for the rest of the year (or for several years to come) - guaranteed!

I didn't know who any of these musicians were before watching the DVD, but I sure as hell do now.

YES! If you at all like the blues, blues culture, or Blues in Mississippi, you will love this film and you should buy it.

It's actually interesting and funny at the same time, with great music built-in to every scene.

Great characters, well done. Great music with an incredibly good flow... A must add for the music library.

Roger Stolle, Jeff Konkel and Kari Jones do an outstanding job of showing us the current state of Mississippi blues. This is a superb documentary. This film tells the story of these mostly little heralded artists, you feel the love these artist have for the music, and how they are driven to play it. Buy this dvd, then travel to the delta, visit the birthplace of the blues. I have and it is well worth the trip

Miss. may be the home of the blues, but I traveled up and down the Delta for a few weeks in 2000 and saw mainly a series of ghost towns. Saw T Model playing for 2 tourists in a faked up juke joint in Greenville, while a group of local blacks gathered around a youthful R and B band playing outside. T Model told me he didn't start playing guitar until he was retired from his truck driving job. The Delta is mainly vast stretches of flat tilled land tended by machines, irrigation wands and crop planes. There aren't many laborers left, just a few tractor drivers, and the poverty is sometimes dire. The towns look vacant and dusty and the juke joints, if you can find one, are rarely open. What's left is the dream of a past that was probably a lot uglier than we can imagine.

This dvd is a sad reminder that all of the greats of the Country Blues, save Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris, and Rory Block, are dead and gone. The only performer on this disc who could possibly be called a musician is Robert Belfour, though he is nothing to write home about. T-Model Ford may be a gangster but his music is poor and has no relation to Country Blues records that were released on LP in the 1960s, let alone the magnificent music that this country produced in the '20s and '30s. The first "musician" that the two clueless hosts of our documentary encounter appears to be a mentally retarded man. He is unable to speak in any variant of the English language and has as much talent on guitar as a 4 year old who has just picked up the guitar for the first time. The monotonous, boring, non-rhyming slime that Wesley "Junebug" Jefferson is heard singing as he approaches Stovall Plantation is laughable.

I am saying all of this so that those who actually know something about Country Blues will avoid this dvd like the plague. It's obvious that the other reviews of this dvd were written by people who love Country Blues so much that they're unable to distinguish what's good, what's bad, and what's ugly.

If you're into comedies, you might want to pick up this dvd, though.