If you want a truly great blues experience, visit your local blues bar for a live performance. You will be particularly rewarded if you are able to do so in a place like Chicago or Memphis. Other than a live performance, there are few other places to experience the blues. Here is a list of my top 10 favorite blues movies.
Finding a great movie that features blues music is not easy. In fact just putting this list together was harder than I thought it would be and only goes to show how little good blues music is featured in film. For blues on film, we want to see some of these artists in action, or get a heavy dose of blues throughout the film.
10. Kingpin (1996) Although the film is very funny, it is not about the blues. The best part about the film for blues fans is the credits at the end. As they roll Blues Traveler performs a live music video of “But Anyway.”
9. Lady Sing the Blues (1972) Dianna Ross stars as Billie Holiday and sings her way through the blues in this better than average bio picture. It’s by far the best thing that Ross has ever done on film, and it’s hard to beat Billie Holiday for the blues. Her life story explains a great deal about the nature of the genre.
8. Mo’ Better Blues (1990) A Spike Lee film, he captures a credible back-story of the musician Bleek Gilliam’s life. It’s a bit more jazz than blues, but the two genres many times cross over. Until there’s some more films that focus specifically on the blues, this will have to do.
7. Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995) A mob story not a blues story, but no matter what you think of the movie there’s a great scene with the house blues band. And yep, that is the world’s greatest guitar player on stage – the great Buddy Guy. To hear Buddy play the blues automatically bumps this movie into the top 10 best movies of all time.
6. Sounder (1972) This better than average family film has a great blues soundtrack throughout by Taj Mahal. The film is a coming of age story about a boy growing up in the 1930’s as a sharecropper in Louisiana.
5. Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) As a sequel goes, not the best by any measure. It does however give you the chance to see several blues artists in a music video, and in my opinion that’s the only worthwhile thing about the film – other than sticking around to watch the credits in which they had a mass blues ensemble singing over the credits. Just a sampling of the performers is self-explanatory: Aretha Franklin, Jonny Lang, B.B. King, Lonnie Brooks, Taj Mahal, and Blues Traveler.
4. O Brother Where Art Thou (2000) Music is so integral to this excellent Coen brothers film that it deserves a listing even though most of the songs are bluegrass related. However, when the escaped prisoners pick up Tommy Johnson at the Crossroads that authenticates the blues roots of the film. Also, the fact that roots rock artist T Bone Burnett is behind the original music of the film, there are plenty of Delta blues elements.
3. Crossroads (1986) Walter Hill’s film loosely based on the great Robert Johnson’s legendary deal with the Devil at the Crossroads contains some great blues music. Arguably, this is the best blues soundtrack of all time, highlighted at the end with the guitar battle with Steve Vai that helped a few young metalheads realize how important the blues are for hardcore guitar players. It also helped revive Robert Johnson’s career, some 50 years after his pre-mature death.
2. Genghis Blues (1999) This documentary is a first effort by young filmmakers Adrian and Roko Belic that took them to a remote region in the geographical center of Asia to record blues artist Paul Peña as he takes part in a Tuvan throat singing competition. It is amazing to see and hear as the singer is able to create harmonic effects with his voice by singing two or three notes simultaneously!
1. Blues Brothers (1980) If asked to name the one film that has given the biggest popular boost to the blues, it has to be this classic comedy. Belushi sings the blues surprisingly well. He just has got the soul for it. Dan Aykroyd obviously loves the blues. The movie is set around Chicago, and there is no better place for the blues. And the set pieces absolutely rock with the blues and soul legends that they engage: with the diner rocking with Aretha’s “Think” and the streets of Chicago giving it up for John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” and Ray Charles’ “Shake a Tail Feather.”
