Watchin’ The Blues
I have been watching the PBS series The Blues this week and I'm telling you this documentary on the blues exec produced by Martin Scorsese is fantastic and I urge everyone to tune in. Even if you are not a...
Posted in Blogcritics on October 1, 2003 11:16 PM
Bobby Rush Tames The Booty
Last night I was idly flipping channels before hitting the sack when I came upon the third episode of Martin Scorsese's The Blues, directed by Richard Pearce. Daaaamn. The Blues is a gigantic thing that most people (and most fans...
Posted in Blogcritics on October 1, 2003 11:35 AM
Feel the Love
Steve was right: last night's episode of Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues, "The Road to Memphis," was fun, powerful and very moving. Director Richard Pearce followed blues superstar B.B. King and mid-level blues veteran Bobby Rush in their respective tour...
Posted in Blogcritics on October 1, 2003 09:28 AM
Scorsese's Blues
I am really enjoying Martin Scorsese's blues series on PBS. Sunday night's debut was a journey, directed by Scorsese himself, from the Mississippi Delta to Mali in West Africa with young bluesman Corey Harris, going farther and farther back in...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 30, 2003 04:50 PM
BB King on The Blues
The best episode of the Blues so far airs tonight. It focuses on BB King. Tomorrow's show is a movie by the great director Charles Burnett. The DVD box set also comes out today, and a concert DVD of...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 30, 2003 02:54 PM
The Friday Morning Listen
Father Of The Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions - Son House
I'm pretty much gettin' cranked up for this weekend's premier of Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues.(First posted on Mark Is Cranky)...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 26, 2003 09:00 AM
Slim Harpo - The Excello Singles Anthology 1957-71
A great new Slim Harpo (born James Moore, 1924) collection is the first I have received in connection with the forthcoming PBS series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, a seven-part look at the genre premiering Sept. 28. While Harpo's name...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 2, 2003 11:27 AM
And here are some more recent blues-related posts from Blogcritics:
Allman Brothers Alive Again
The original Allman Brothers Band is back in the spotlight, and rightly so.
Posted in Blogcritics on September 24, 2003 05:11 PM
Robert Randolph & The Family Band: Unclassified
Smoke drifts towards toward the gray celing. A man about the age of fifty sits, puffing on a pipe. His eyelids are starting to droop, and he makes no effort to change that. He is sitting in a large, leather...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 18, 2003 07:23 PM
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
this is interesting. maybe i'm not rememberin' this correctly, but i could swear that the buildup to ken burns "Jazz" was much larger than this....but there appears to be a much larger groundswell of blues support after only three nights of the show.
...which is fine by me (the burns thing was disappointing on several levels)
2 - Taloran
I loved the Ken Burns Jazz series. I am also very much enjoying the Scorsese series. I am a much bigger blues fan than jazz fan (20 years ago the opposite was true) but I found the Burns series more educational (thus far.)
3 - Eric Olsen
T, you're right about the educational side of it. Scorsese and his minions have made a big deal about the series being "impressionistic not pedantic," and that has certainly been true. The book and the CDs assotiated with the series are much more educational than the films themselves.
4 - jan herman
Hate to disagree with you Eric, but I find the films in the blues series getting progressively worse. I think the best one was Scorsese's on the first night of the series. The rest seem dull, though I love the music. They're missed opportunities to me.
-- Jan Herman
5 - Eric Olsen
Disagree away! What would you do differently, how would the opportunity be better fulfilled?
6 - Mac Diva
For the interest in the blues to spread to the hoi polloi there need to be tie-ins, Mark. Ken Burns' relationship with Starbucks' Here Music and a special Borders Books pamphlet and CD series kept the material out there. I suspect it may have penetrated to people who never gave jazz a second thought before.
A funny aside in regard to Burns is it was also the jazz films that got him kicked out of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
7 - Eric Olsen
MD, that is funny! Was he too sympathetic to the artistry of the descendents of the unpaid help?
I think the marketing difference just comes down to Burns himself. Over the course of doing his films he has learned to be a great marketer and merchandiser. I don't he's ever had anything like the volume of products The Blues series has, though.