This is miraculous. I could hardly be more amazed to be shown lost cine-footage of the Battle of Hastings. In these two volumes are three hours of music I’ve been hearing all my life but have practically never seen. Filmed by West German TV cameras between 1962 and 1966, here are actual performances by the greatest blues musicians the world has known. It’s a bit like putting down a book of old folklore to find the legendary beasts are tapping at your window.
The American Folk Blues Festival was a German-sponsored package tour that came to Europe every year between 1962 and 1970, and sporadically after that. In its prime it was a galvanising force in British music -– the earliest UK shows were received like a religious vision by young devotees including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page. In their attempts to replicate the magic of those performers they would transform rock’n’roll, become billionaires and, as a benign by-product, win belated recognition for blues artists who were all but forgotten in their homeland.
Happily, the German stints of these tours were often captured on film and after 40 years in storage the precious reels have been transferred to DVD. Characters like Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim and Mississippi Fred McDowell seemed to me to be lost to history – as remote, in a way, as Beethoven or Brahms. To be suddenly presented with pristine footage of them in action, and talking straight to you through the camera lens, is both eerie and thrilling. Some performers here, such as Lonnie Johnson and Victoria Spivey, made their names as far back as the 1920s. It’s strange to think they were even alive when TV shows like this were being made.
Entirely in black and white, the footage is remarkably sharp. Some of the clips were filmed in concert halls, before a reverent audience of bespectacled hep cats in suits, shirts and ties. Other segments were shot in the TV studios, and often with cool, modernist style. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee play for a bevy of black dancers on a re-created Louisiana porch; Memphis Slim plays the lounge lizard pianist in a mocked-up juke joint; Howlin’ Wolf storms his way through *Shake For Me* in a ply-wood Delta shack.
It’s the *physicality* of the experience that strikes you. These are mainly reserved performers, not demonstrative, but they are without exception hypnotic to watch. There is the fierce, proud stare of Eddie Boyd, the unnerving calm of John Lee Hooker, the lordly authority of Muddy Waters, the girlish flirtiness of Victoria Spivey and the matronly warmth of Sippie Wallace. Everywhere are long, boney limbs, or massive hands clamped around harmonicas and guitar necks. The stooping gait of Sonny Boy Williamson is a model of old-world elegance, but there’s goatish mischief in his face – even at 65 or so he was clearly not the sort of bluesman you would leave in a room with your wife.
The programme makers caught their subjects just in time: within a few more years a lot of these artists were dead. Thanks to its European fans the blues was about to go global, but it was already obvious that these old timers were its history, not its destiny. Back in America their core audience was dwindling, younger blacks preferring James Brown and Motown to gnarly tales of hard times and stoicism. Memphis Slim makes droll acknowledgement of the situation when he introduces pianist Otis Spann: “We call him the Future of the Blues, because he’s young in the business, he’s only been playing the blues for 25 years.”
While they’re a treat to hear and see, these films also work as a sort of social document. Less than 20 years after Hitler’s death, here was the German population being shown the most dignified exponents of African-American culture. Performers who had, in some cases, scarcely played a concert in the USA were now appearing in halls that once hosted Mozart. Accustomed to segregation and cultural neglect, these same men and woman were suddenly objects of intense respect. They were paid more money than they had ever dreamed possible. Small wonder that Sonny Boy Williamson opted to stick around in London for a while, lionised by long-haired white boys and snapping up Savile Row suits. For his part, Memphis Slim simply became a Parisian.
There is nothing to choose between these two volumes. Both are indispensable documents that will bring the blues alive for even people who think they don’t like that moany old 12-bar stuff.
WORD’S VERDICT: Spellbinding performances. Historic is not too strong a word.
