Great New Documentary on the Blues, “Born in Chicago”

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I tweeted this message last evening with a link to a trailer for the NY premiere of a new documentary I was heading out to see at the Lincoln Society Film Center.

 

The screening was for “Born in Chicago,” a new 90-minute doc on the blues. It was a thrill for Kyle and me to be there. We had learned about the one-night showing from a NY Times article yesterday that began like this:

“Late in his career, Muddy Waters recorded a song called ‘The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll.’ That, in a nutshell, is the story told in the new documentary “Born in Chicago” — how he, Howlin’ Wolf and other black blues musicians working in Chicago in the 1960s schooled young white acolytes from that city who went on to play on some of the most influential pop recordings of the era.”

After reading the paper we quickly went online and ordered tickets for the lone screening, luckily for us because when we arrived it had clearly sold out. It is a joyous film with superb archival footage, moving interviews, and high-quality audio of many great blues performances. It also narrates a moving story about how aspiring teenage musicians like guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Barry Goldberg, from affluent parts of Chicago, began frequenting the clubs and bars where black titans of the blues like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were then in residence, well on to being the blues legends they ultimately would be known as. Despite their age–Bloomfield was only 17 at the outset in 1960–co-producer Goldberg chronicles the time the two boys borrowed Michael’s mother’s car, drove through the all-black neighborhoods on the South Side to the club, which was called Pepper’s, I believe. They found parking “four steps from the front door,” made their way to a front table, and began listening to the masters. Gratified by the respect shown them and their clear eagerness to learn the music, the musicians soon invited them to sit in with the bands and a fruitful and historic musical collaboration was born. The generosity of Muddy and Wolf, with their sidemen like Willie Dixon, Sam Lay, and others became a hallmark of the era. And, the youngsters really learned to play.

Goldberg recalled that soon when Otis Spann, who often played piano in Muddy Waters’ outfit, was invited to go on the road with another big bluesman of the time, say Little Walter, he was able to take the job because Barry could sit in and play keys for Muddy while Spann was out of town. The bench of blues performers in Chicago got a lot deeper.

Born_In_Chicago_Trailer_Screen_smAmong the musicians interviewed for the film are Bob Dylan, who later hired Bloomfield and Goldberg for his backing band; B.B. King, who remembered Bloomfield as one of the best guitarists he ever heard; Keith Richards, who with his Rolling Stone bandmates are shown here in hilarious footage with Muddy Waters and Mick Jagger (in a bright red track suit) swapping lead vocals; Buddy Guy, who we learn would stroll out the open door of a blues club playing his electric guitar on a “100-foot long chord” to make music right out in the streets; Hubert Sumlin, lead guitarist with Howlin’ Wolf, who’s shown here with the aid of medical oxygen, in what would be his last taped interview; Eric Burdon of the Animals, who remembers that growing up in Newcastle, England, new blues albums from Chess Records would arrive in local record stores, allowing him and his bandmates to hear and then play the blues; Charlie Musselwhite, a white southerner who migrated north to Chicago for factory work and soon found himself ensconced in a blues community; Elvin Bishop, who like Mike Bloomfield played in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and who tells such tales as wandering in to a Chicago pawnshop to buy a new guitar, and being waited on by young Bloomfield; Nick Gravenites, who wrote a signature song of the Butterfield Band, “Born in Chicago”; Harvey Mandel, who played in Canned Heat, with John Mayall and the Blues Breaker, and Bob Dylan; Sam Lay, drummer with many of the great blues bands; Jack White, who spoke about the influence of the blues on his music and the challenges young artists face today in gaining access to, say, senior players, in hip-hop or rappers, especially.

In the audience last night were “Born in Chicago” director John Anderson; Chicago bluesman Corky Siegel, of the Siegel-Schwall Band; Marshall Chess of Chess Records, who narrates “Born in Chicago” (not his late father Leonard, as I had mistakenly tweeted); and co-producer of the film, Barry Goldberg. After the film they took seats in front of the audience and Siegel played a blistering harmonica solo, which got everyone pumped for the spirited conversation and Q&A session that followed. During the Q&A, Marshall Chess recalled how eager he was to make an outpost in Britain for Chess Records by forging a relationship with record distributors there. Chess also remembered that Howlin’ Wolf could be stern with a musician who played a wrong note, but was also a gentle giant. Corky Siegel remembered that between sets of music outside of clubs such as the Blue Flame he and Wolf would talk, sip whiskey, and walk the nearby alleys. Siegel said that Wolf’s generosity showed him the blues is not just about music, but a way of living one’s life, with love and freedom.

The film’s theatrical release is still being plotted by the producers. It clearly warrants widespread distribution and I expect it to have major exposure in the months to come. In the meantime, I suggest you ‘like’ their Facebook page, read this Chicago Blues Guide review of a recent reunion concert that brought together many blues musicians from the film, read Larry Rohter’s NY Times story from July 26 and view the accompanying slideshow of great B&W photos, share the above trailer widely with your friends. Here are photos I took after the screening and shots of some of my treasured blues LPs from Chess Records and one I’ve had for years by the Siegel-Schwall Band. Please click here to see photos.
Since you got all the way down here in this post, you must love the blues. So, I recommend my personal essay about Cleveland bluesman Mr. Stress, who I wrote about in the book Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology. Stress was a great local bluesman I followed all the drinking-age years I lived in my old hometown, from 1972 to 1985. A harmonica player, singer, and bandleader Stress was the Paul Butterfield of Cleveland. He still lives in Cleveland.

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#FridayReads, July 26–Robert Goddard’s “Fault Line” & Edward McClelland’s “Nothin’ But Blue Skies”

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IMG_0944#FridayReads, July 26–British novelist Robert Goddard’s Fault Line, a totally engrossing book that weaves together a Cornwall-based ceramic company’s shrouded background with a local family’s equally buried history. Goddard is a true master of plotting, character, suspense, and surprise by whom I’ve enjoyed nearly 20 earlier books, after first discovering him in a 2008 Paste magazine feature with Stephen King, who made this unqualified endorsement of Goddard’s books:

“The best books—yes, books—I’ve read this year are the mystery/thriller/suspense novels of a British writer named Robert Goddard. I happened on him by accident; a handful of his books have now been issued in America, but I had to get most of them direct from Britain, where he’s a bestseller. Goddard has written at an amazing pace—17 or 18 novels in as many years—but his writing is sharp and sometimes poetic. The stories, which usually center on well-kept secrets from the early part of the 20th century (in Closed Circle, the secret is a group of well-heeled British manufacturers who caused World War I) are amazing tricks of conjury. Here are surprises that really surprise. The protagonists (the books are stand-alones) are decent fellows out of their league who mostly—but not always—find a way to muddle through. These are authentic stay-up-late-to-finish stories, and there doesn’t seem to be a bad one in the bunch. The place to start is with Goddard’s first: Past Caring.”

I paid special attention to King’s recommendation owing to a personal encounter I’d had with him many years earlier. In 1979 he was already a popular novelist, with bestsellers Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and The Shining already to his name, but his books hadn’t been filmed yet or adapted for TV. Within a year or two he would be much more famous. He was on a book tour for his novel Dead Zone, probably his fifth or sixth published book, and our Viking Press sales rep brought him by my Cleveland bookstore, Undercover Books, to sign our hardcover stock of the current title, and other copies of his books we had on hand. It wasn’t a reading, just a quick drop-by.

While I was gathering up our inventory, King was browsing and saw on display a copy of another then-current Viking novel.  Pointing to it, he said to me and a couple customers nearby, “The really great novel from Viking right now is The Dogs of March by Ernest Hebert.” I was excited at this because I’d already read Hebert’s book, and had loved it, too. Like King from Bangor, ME, Hebert was a New Englander, from Keene, New Hampshire. The Granite State was where I had gone to college, Franconia College in the White Mountains, and I’d found Hebert’s portrayal of working class people in the North Country to be utterly real and believable. I told King that I shared his enthusiasm for Hebert’s book and that I would now recommend it to my customers all the more energetically. In fact, soon after this conversation, I wrote a letter to Hebert c/o Viking and let him know that I’d enjoyed his book, and that he and his book had booster in Stephen King and my bookstore. After, that Ernie–as I came to know him–and I carried on a correspondence for several years and I visited with him and his family on trips I made back to New Hampshire. We later fell out of touch but Hebert has continued writing novels and moved from working as a newspaper reporter to teaching English at Dartmouth, where I believe he still works. He has a number of footprints on the Internet, one via a Dartmouth url called Recycling Reality: A Writer’s View of the World and a blog of his own. From the latter, I see that The Dogs of March is officially in print 34 years after it first appeared Writing this post, I’ve decided to see if I might re-forge a connection with Hebert and so will share this post with him.IMG_0945

Goddard’s books are usually set in rural Britain with plots that also take his characters to such Mediterranean locales as Capri and Rhodes. Like Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer novels, such as The Zebra Striped Hearse, which invariably chronicle multiple generations of a family and secrets that have been long buried and are excavated by private detective Archer, Goddard’s books explore the complicated histories of families that have been on the land sometimes for hundreds of years, though his books don’t feature a private detective or policeman. Instead, there’s a male narrator or protagonist who, as King says, “are decent fellows out of their league who mostly—but not always—find a way to muddle through.” In Fault Line, narrator Jonathan Kellaway is a long-time employee of the ceramics manufacturer whose corporate history is being written by an academic historian. (Like Balzac’s Lost Illusions, in which we learn about paper, ink, and printing technology in 19th century France, here we learn that Cornwall is ideal for the production of household ceramics owing to the local soil that is so rich in clay.)  Kellaway’s elderly CEO details him to help the historian in her work and undertake a search for company records from a vital period of its history that have unaccountably gone missing. I’d agree the fate of a ceramics company doesn’t sound exciting, but from ordinary saplings mighty narrative oaks may grow.

I think of Goddard as a latter-day John Fowles, the notable British novelist who produced such masterworks as The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Along with sharing (above) a picture I took of the copy of Fault Line I finished reading yesterday, here’s a shot of all the other Goddard books I’ve read since I discovered Stephen King’s recommendation of him in early 2009. Goddard's backlist

After finishing Fault Line yesterday, I picked up a new book of literary journalism Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland by Edward McClelland. I had already read an excerpt Canoeing the Cuyahoga in the Scene, a local Cleveland magazine, and really liked his approach to writing about my old hometown. His work is full of little-known historical nuggets and on-the-ground reporting, or in this case, on-the-river reporting. McClelland is a native of Lansing, MI, so the book actually begins with some great reportage on his hometown in the 60s and 70s when auto plant culture dominated the town, with freeway ramps being designed to accommodate the auto workers’ daily arrival and exodus from the plants. Chapter One covers the Flint, MI sit-down strike of 1936-37, an event I knew nothing about until last night. As a contributor to Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, I was glad to see that co-editor of the anthology, Anne Trubek, had enjoyed McClelland’s book and is quoted about it on the back cover: “McClelland assembles old-school reporting, memoir, history, and wit into a brilliant story about the workers and robber barons who created booming economies, the strikes, politics, and global changes that rendered them depressed, and the people from Decatur to Syracuse trying to figure out what’s next. Neither starry-eyed nor despairing, Nothin’ But Blue Skies is the book to read on the past, present, and future of the Rust Belt.”

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No question it’s been a great past week of reading. And it’s going to be a great few more weeks of reading to come with such books in my to-be-read pile as  They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at a Residential Indian School by Bev Sellars, Chief of the Soda Creek First Nation band of British Columbia, Canada; Boris Kaschka’s Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House; Jumpa Lahiri’s September novel, The Lowland; and Jayne Anne Phillips’ October novel, Quiet Dell.Summer reading

Please note: All the book links in this blog post are live and go to the website of Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. Under an arrangement I’ve made with Powell’s, if you choose to buy any books linked, they return a portion of your purchase price to help me maintain this website.

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