MVD Video has just released on DVD Blues, Rags, & Hollers: The Koerner, Ray & Glover Story. It began life as a thirty-minute educational piece for the Midwest school district. Then Tony Glover got to work on it and helped expand it into the full-length feature it is now. The film initially starts out with the story of the three of them getting together in the early part of the sixties, then it follows their individual stories through the sixties and seventies, and brings them back together for the final years of the group's performances.
Interspersed throughout the documentary are outtakes from performances they had given on PBS and other television stations throughout the eighties and nineties showing what it was that made them so unique for their time, and even now. The only other performer I can think who is similar in approach to the old Country Blues songs that typified their performance style is John Hammond Jr.
Some of the most fascinating material on this documentary is the time spent on their individual careers. For Dave Ray it was your classic Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out scenario as he first took over some land and worked with a forgettable band experimenting with drugs and music in equal doses.
He then decided that he wanted to move into the business side of music and bought up a bunch of recording equipment and engineered Bonnie Raitt's first album. She had actually requested her label at the time to have him work on the album because she had really liked his work. But he kept on playing the whole time, with regular acoustic and electric gigs in bars throughout the Mid-west and never lost contact with Glover.
According to the documentary the three pretty much did variations on the hobo/gypsy/musician lifestyle for most of the sixties, broadening their horizons and expanding their minds. It sounds almost clichéd I know, but some people actually did do things like that during the sixties and came out the other side the better for it.
How significant were these three guys when it came to influencing music? Well according to John Lennon's first wife Cynthia one of the albums that he listened to the most in the early years was their first one Blues, Rags, & Hollers. What they did was cross the colour barrier in reverse and played old time Country/Blues like it was meant to be played, with all the rough edges intact.
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