Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola’s Very First Film Follows a 7th-Grade Conspiracy (1998)

in Film | January 4th, 2013

Young women trapped in gild­ed cages: that’s the theme that comes to mind when think­ing about the films of Sofia Cop­po­la, so read­i­ly that her Wikipedia page uses the phrase almost ver­ba­tim. The Vir­gin Sui­cides starred five sub­ur­ban sis­ters under ever-tight­en­ing parental lock­down. Lost in Trans­la­tion found a rock pho­tog­ra­pher’s wife free yet adrift in a swank Tokyo hotel. Marie Antoinette made a sub­ject of, well, Marie Antoinette, and Some­where left its eleven-year-old daugh­ter of a dis­af­fect­ed movie star with no choice but turn up on on her dad’s Chateau Mar­mont doorstep. Even now, the film­mak­er com­pletes work on The Bling Ring, whose tit­u­lar clutch of teenagers find them­selves dri­ven to bur­gle the homes of Paris Hilton, Lind­say Lohan, and oth­er such lumi­nar­ies, sure­ly out of sheer ennui. But the most vicious expres­sion of the sig­na­ture Sofia Cop­po­la set­up came in her very first film, the 1998 short Lick the Star.

Set amid the aris­to­crat­ic court-lev­el intrigue of a mid­dle-class junior high school, the sto­ry traces the break­down of a con­spir­a­cy by the girls, led by sev­enth-grade queen bee Chloe, to grad­u­al­ly poi­son the boys with dos­es of arsenic. In what we by now will have come to think of as a Cop­polan turn, Chloe gets the idea from V.C. Andrews’ Flow­ers in the Attic, copies of which she pass­es around to the under­lings she pres­sures into help­ing her exe­cute the plan. Alas, what goes for the best-laid plans of mice and men goes also for those of spite­ful thir­teen-year-old girls. Shot on black-and-white 16-mil­lime­ter film, Lick the Star would at first seem to fit right in, aes­thet­i­cal­ly, with the oth­er quick-and-dirty debuts of the 1990s’ Amer­i­can indie boom, but a series of strik­ing styl­is­tic touch­es soon set it apart. More evi­dence for Cop­po­la’s defend­ers, who argue against the detrac­tors who accuse her of hav­ing got­ten by on nepo­tism. Then again, with­out the right con­nec­tions, could she have cast Peter Bog­danovich as the prin­ci­pal?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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James Brown Gives You Dancing Lessons: From The Funky Chicken to The Boogaloo

in Life, Music | January 4th, 2013

Don’t go into this expect­ing Arthur Mur­ray-lev­el clar­i­ty of instruc­tion. This is Soul Train-era James Brown, shak­ing way more than any sim­ple foot­print pat­tern could con­vey. That’s not to say there isn’t con­crete infor­ma­tion to be gleaned here, espe­cial­ly if you nev­er real­ly knew which moves con­sti­tute The Funky Chick­en.  Dit­to The Booga­loo, The Camel Walk, and some­thing I swear sounds like The Mac Davis.

James proud­ly demon­strates them all, as uncon­cerned as a pea­cock would be when it comes to break­ing things down for the folks at home. (Trust me, your kneecaps will be grate­ful he’s not more explic­it.) Enjoy this lit­tle dance break any time you need a boost. Or what the hell, see how your Robot stacks up against James’. (Be fore­warned, he blows Shields and Yarnell out of the water.) If — as the song goes — You Don’t Give A Dog­gone About It, you’ll have a lot of fun. Leave the shades open, and your neigh­bors will too.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day has nev­er shied away from embar­rass­ing her­self off or on the dance floor. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Bob Marley, The Legend, Live in Santa Barbara: Watch the Complete 1979 Concert

in Music | January 3rd, 2013

In the fall of 1979 Bob Mar­ley and his band, the Wail­ers, went on tour to pro­mote their album, Sur­vival. It turned out to be the sec­ond-to-last tour for the reg­gae star, who had been diag­nosed two years ear­li­er with can­cer. But in late 1979 Mar­ley appeared to be in excel­lent form. Lucky for us, a cam­era crew was there to record one of his shows.

The film above was shot at the San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty Bowl in Cal­i­for­nia on Novem­ber 25, 1979, just 16 months before Mar­ley’s untime­ly death at the age of 36. It was released on DVD in 2003 as Bob Mar­ley: The Leg­end Live. The Wail­ers were in their sec­ond incar­na­tion in 1979, and had become lit­tle more than a back­up band after the depar­ture in 1974 of core mem­bers Peter Tosh and Bun­ny Wail­er.

The line­up in the film includes Mar­ley on rhythm gui­tar and vocals, broth­ers Aston and Carl­ton Bar­rett on bass and drums, Junior Mar­vin and Al Ander­son on lead gui­tar, Tyrone Down­ie and Earl “Wya” Lin­do on key­boards, Devon Evans and Alvin “Seeco” Pat­ter­son on per­cus­sion, Glen DaCos­ta on sax­o­phone, Dave Mad­den on trum­pet and the “I Threes” (Judy Mowatt, Mar­cia Grif­fiths and Mar­ley’s wife Rita) on back­ing vocals.

The film is essen­tial­ly a record of the com­plete San­ta Bar­bara con­cert, but the order of the songs has been re-arranged. Here’s the set list as it appears in the film:

  1. Pos­i­tive Vibra­tion
  2. Wake Up and Live
  3. I Shot the Sher­iff
  4. Ambush in the Night
  5. Con­crete Jun­gle
  6. Run­ning Away
  7. Crazy Bald­head
  8. Them Bel­ly Full (But We Hun­gry)
  9. The Hea­then
  10. Ride Nat­ty Ride
  11. Africa Unite
  12. One Drop
  13. Exo­dus
  14. So Much Things to Say
  15. Zim­bab­we
  16. Jam­ming
  17. Is This Love
  18. Kinky Reg­gae
  19. Stir It Up
  20. Get Up, Stand Up

Bob Mar­ley: The Leg­end Live is not the last film ever made of a Mar­ley con­cert, as some have claimed, but it is an excel­lent record from the late peri­od of the man who put reg­gae on the glob­al music map.

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British Actors Read Poignant Poetry from World War I

in History, Literature, Poetry | January 3rd, 2013

The First World War (1914–1918) changed Britain to a degree that was unthink­able in 1914. Pre-war cer­tain­ties and val­ues such as hon­or, father­land and progress dis­in­te­grat­ed on the bat­tle­fields and trench­es in France and Bel­gium. New tech­nol­o­gy such as tanks, machine guns, grenades, flame throw­ers and poi­son gas were used to destroy the ene­my; con­stant fire for days on end was intend­ed to break the sol­diers in the trench­es. Unspeak­able hor­rors led to psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems of unknown pro­por­tions.

Cop­ing with these hor­rors dur­ing and after The Great War (as it’s still called in Britain today) seemed like a Her­culean task to poets — how do you put the unspeak­able into words? Some poets, e.g. Rupert Brooke, still cel­e­brat­ed the hero­ism of the Eng­lish sol­diers (e.g., 1914 II. Safe­ty), where­as oth­ers, such as Wil­fred Owen, tried to describe the hor­rors of this war (e.g., Dulce et Deco­rum Est).

Every year on the Sun­day clos­est to Novem­ber 11, Britain remem­bers the dead of the First World War. For Remem­brance Day 2012, famous British actors were asked to recite First World War poet­ry. The fin­ished clips were to be shown on TV that day. The video above shows three actors recit­ing four poems by Rupert Brooke and Wil­fred Owen (click the names of the actors for infor­ma­tion about them and the titles of the poems for the full text):

  1. Sean Bean reads Wil­fred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
  2. Gem­ma Arter­ton reads Wil­fred Owen’s “Arms and the Boy”
  3. Sophie Okone­do reads Rupert Brooke’s “The Sol­dier”
  4. Sean Bean reads Wil­fred Owen’s “The Last Laugh”

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Saul Bass’ Advice for Designers: Make Something Beautiful and Don’t Worry About the Money

in Design | January 3rd, 2013

It comes as no sur­prise that the man who cre­at­ed the title sequences for The Man with the Gold­en Arm, North by North­west, Psy­cho, and Ver­ti­go can tell you a thing or two about graph­ic design. He can even tell his estab­lished col­leagues a thing or two about graph­ic design, as seen in the clip above. The man, of course, is Saul Bass, and this footage of him comes from a long-form inter­view con­duct­ed by design­er and edu­ca­tor Archie Boston.

In 1986, Boston paid a vis­it to Bass’ stu­dio for a project called 20 Out­stand­ing Los Ange­les Design­ers, shoot­ing a con­ver­sa­tion that touched on many sub­jects, includ­ing the emi­nence’s main piece of advice for graph­ic design stu­dents. “Learn to draw,” Bass pro­nounces.

“If you don’t, you’re going to live your life get­ting around that and try­ing to com­pen­sate for that.” Design, as observers of the dis­ci­pline say, ulti­mate­ly comes down to com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Accord­ing to Bass, aspir­ing design­ers fail to mas­ter draw­ing, one of com­mu­ni­ca­tion’s most basic but rich­est forms, at their per­il.

The clip just above goes deep­er than giv­ing prac­ti­cal advice, get­ting down to the very rai­son d’être of the graph­ic design­er. Bass puts it unam­bigu­ous­ly: “Aes­thet­ics are your prob­lem and mine. Nobody else’s. The fact of the mat­ter is, I want every­thing we do — that I do per­son­al­ly, that our office does — to be beau­ti­ful. I don’t give a damn whether the client under­stands that that’s worth any­thing, or that the client thinks that it’s worth any­thing, or whether it is worth any­thing. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beau­ti­ful things, even if nobody cares.” Explore our relat­ed con­tent sec­tion below to get an exten­sive idea of the fruits of Bass’ unbend­ing desire to cre­ate beau­ty. You may or may not find, say, his reimag­ined Amer­i­can Bell office lady uni­forms beau­ti­ful, but you can’t deny that they come from a mind whol­ly ded­i­cat­ed to aes­thet­ics — and one that cared not just about the how of cre­ation, but the why as well.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Saul Bass Gives Ma Bell a Com­plete Makeover, 1969

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

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Chuck Berry Takes Keith Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

in Music | January 3rd, 2013

Update: The great Chuck Berry has passed away at 90, join­ing many oth­er leg­ends in rock n roll heav­en. There’s so many great things to say about Mr. Berry. And we’ll have more on the site in the com­ing week. For now, enjoy one of our favorite Berry items from the archive.

The pur­pose of Tay­lor Hackford’s 1987 film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll was to doc­u­ment two con­certs held at the Fox The­atre in St. Louis to cel­e­brate Chuck Berry’s 60th birth­day, and that it does, giv­ing audi­ences loads of con­cert footage. Berry plays the hits, backed by an all-star band of leg­endary blues­men, R&B singers, and rock gui­tarists, assem­bled and direct­ed by pres­i­dent of the Chuck Berry fan club, Kei­th Richards: There’s Bob­by Keys and Chuck Leavell, Robert Cray and Eric Clap­ton, Etta James and Lin­da Ron­stadt.

And that’s not to men­tion the talk­ing head appear­ances from peo­ple like Bo Did­dley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbi­son, Lit­tle Richard, and Bruce Spring­steen. In the pan­theon of rock-docs, it’s right up there with Last Waltz. The live takes are electrifying—the band’s pis­tons pound as they strug­gle to keep up with Berry. If the man had slowed down any in his sixth decade, it’s lit­tle won­der he had trou­ble hold­ing onto back­ing bands in his youth. Watch him go in the 1958 clip below.

But there’s anoth­er rea­son Berry burned through musi­cians. He is not an easy man to work with (nor, I would think, for). Bril­liant live per­for­mances abound in Hackford’s film, but one of its prin­ci­ple charms is the rehearsal footage, where Berry berates and bewil­ders his musicians–and some­times, like he does above to Richards, takes them to rock ’n’ roll school. In the clip above, Richards, Berry, and band rehearse “Car­ol,” but it takes them a good while to get going. Richards tries to play band­leader and, think­ing he’s doing Chuck a favor—or not want­i­ng to lose the spotlight—suggests that Berry play rhythm while he plays the lead.

Berry agrees at first. They bick­er and look dag­gers at each oth­er as Richards spoils a bend that only Chuck can play to his own sat­is­fac­tion. Final­ly he dives in and takes over. Why not? It is his song. Richards falls in line, takes the rhythm part, but looks a lit­tle sullen as Berry out­shines him. It’s almost an oedi­pal strug­gle. But the rock fore­fa­ther isn’t about to roll over and let Richards take over.

Else­where in the film, Berry gives voice to the under­ly­ing anger he har­bored for Richards. The Stones and oth­er British bands took Berry’s riffs (he claimed) and made mil­lions, and Chuck nev­er for­gave them. He still doesn’t get enough cred­it. The Rolling Stones still tour and record, but Berry, almost twen­ty years old­er than Richards, is still out on the road too, still show­ing ‘em how it’s done. See sec­ond video below.

1958

2012

Bonus:

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Akira Kurosawa & Francis Ford Coppola Star in Japanese Whisky Commercials (1980)

in Film, Television | January 3rd, 2013

In 1980, the revered Japan­ese direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa shot Kage­musha, oth­er­wise known as The Shad­ow War­rior. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la was the pro­duc­er. Some­where dur­ing the pro­duc­tion, the two film­mak­ers lent their star pow­er to a series of com­mer­cials for Sun­to­ry Whisky. If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er, you know that many cul­tur­al icons have pitched Japan­ese prod­ucts in times past — take for exam­ple Woody Allen, James Brown, Nico­las Cage, Paul New­man and good ole Den­nis Hop­per. And, if you’re even a casu­al movie­go­er, you know that  Sofia Cop­po­la (daugh­ter of Fran­cis) put an Amer­i­can movie star drink­ing whisky at the cen­ter of her Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed film, Lost in Trans­la­tion (2003). And it was­n’t just any whisky that Bill Mur­ray was sip­ping. It was Sun­to­ry Whisky.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

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Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Filmmakers: Sacrifice Yourself for Cinema

in Film | January 2nd, 2013

Few film­mak­ers have been so often, or so unam­bigu­ous­ly, called mas­ters of the medi­um as Andrei Tarkovsky. In acclaimed pic­tures like The Mir­ror, Stalk­er, and Nos­tal­ghia (find free online ver­sions of his films here), he real­ized his visions with­out com­pro­mise. If you can engage with these visions, watch­ing a Tarkovsky film makes for a cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence with­out com­pare. Geoff Dyer, for exam­ple, one of the direc­tor’s par­tic­u­lar­ly high-pro­file fans, recent­ly pub­lished Zona: A Book About a Film About a Jour­ney to a Room, a vol­ume on noth­ing but watch­ing Stalk­er. If you can’t engage with these visions, you may find watch­ing a Tarkovsky film rough going indeed. (Admit­ted­ly, Nos­tal­ghia’s nine min­utes of can­dle-car­ry­ing requires a cer­tain frame of mind.) But if you make films, you’d do well to con­sid­er Tarkovsky’s meth­ods either way. The clip above from the doc­u­men­tary Voy­age in Time offers some insight into how the man thought about his work.

First and fore­most, he did­n’t think about it as “work,” sep­a­rate from oth­er pur­suits. “It’s not hard to learn how to glue the film, how to work a cam­era,” Tarkovsky says. “But the advice I can give to begin­ners is not to sep­a­rate their work, their movie, their film, from the life they live. Not to make a dif­fer­ence between the movie and their own life.” These words don’t come as a sur­prise from a direc­tor well known for craft­ing deeply per­son­al films, but one sus­pects that cre­ators of any kind all too rarely find it in them­selves to heed them. But Tarkovsky, always described as a thor­ough­ly rig­or­ous man, could have lived no oth­er way. “Cin­e­ma is a very dif­fi­cult and seri­ous art,” he con­tin­ues. “It requires sac­ri­fic­ing of your­self. You should belong to it, it should­n’t belong to you. Cin­e­ma uses your life, not vice ver­sa.” A great demand indeed, but we’d sure­ly have a more inter­est­ing cin­e­ma if young direc­tors accept­ed it. The artis­tic world could use more Tarkovskys.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Maurice Sendak’s Emotional Last Interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Animated by Christoph Niemann

in Animation, Radio | January 2nd, 2013

In late Sep­tem­ber of 2011, Mau­rice Sendak spoke one last time with Ter­ry Gross for the NPR pro­gram Fresh Air. Osten­si­bly the inter­view was to pro­mote Sendak’s final book, Bum­ble-Ardy, but as the con­ver­sa­tion pro­gressed it was clear they just want­ed to talk.

The beloved chil­dren’s writer and illus­tra­tor was 83 years old and in declin­ing health. He was feel­ing the loss of peo­ple close to him who had died in recent years. Inevitably, the dis­cus­sion turned to issues of mor­tal­i­ty. As the con­ver­sa­tion built to an emo­tion­al crescen­do, Sendak laid bare the qual­i­ties that made him such a great author: sin­cer­i­ty, depth of feel­ing, and an insu­per­a­ble need to con­nect with peo­ple in some ele­men­tal way.

By the time it was over there were teary-eyed peo­ple in cars all across North Amer­i­ca. One lis­ten­er, Brent Eades, left a mes­sage on the NPR Web site: “I hap­pened to be lis­ten­ing to this extra­or­di­nary inter­view while on the ear­ly-morn­ing com­mute from my small Ontario town to Ottawa. I was entire­ly absorbed in it; and the final cou­ple of min­utes left me with tears stream­ing down my face, which I’m sure non­plussed my fel­low com­muters.”

The Ger­man-born illus­tra­tor Christoph Nie­mann had a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. On Sun­day The New York Times Mag­a­zine post­ed this touch­ing ani­ma­tion by Nie­mann, which tells the sto­ry of how the inter­view affect­ed him. In the film, var­i­ous crea­tures from Sendak’s fer­tile imag­i­na­tion revis­it Nie­mann as he lis­tens in his car, trans­port­ing him again to some­place spe­cial.

Sendak died on May 8, 2012, less than eight months after his con­ver­sa­tion with Gross. Nie­man­n’s film encom­pass­es the last five min­utes of the talk. You can lis­ten to the entire con­ver­sa­tion at the NPR Web site.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mind and Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

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Albert Einstein Expresses His Admiration for Mahatma Gandhi, in Letter and Audio

in Life, Physics | January 2nd, 2013

In 1931, Albert Ein­stein wrote to Mohan­das K. Gand­hi to express his great admi­ra­tion for the Indi­an leader’s meth­ods. Trans­lat­ed from Ger­man, the let­ter reads in part:

You have shown through your works, that it is pos­si­ble to suc­ceed with­out vio­lence even with those who have not dis­card­ed the method of vio­lence.

The let­ter long pre­cedes the first atom­ic bombs and Einstein’s let­ters to F.D.R. warn­ing of their devel­op­ment and use; though often dis­cussed only in rela­tion to the hor­rif­ic events of World War II, the physicist’s oppo­si­tion to vio­lence and war was a long­stand­ing pas­sion for him. Ein­stein called his paci­fism an “instinc­tive feel­ing” based only on his “deep­est antipa­thy to every kind of cru­el­ty and hatred,” rather than any “intel­lec­tu­al the­o­ry.” His pol­i­tics often par­al­leled those of fel­low intel­lec­tu­al giant and anti-war activist Bertrand Rus­sell (the two col­lab­o­rat­ed on a 1955 “Man­i­festo” for peace).

Gand­hi remained an impor­tant influ­ence on Einstein’s life and thought. In the audio clip above from 1950, he again offers gen­er­ous praise for the man known as “Mahat­ma” (great soul). In the record­ing, Ein­stein says of Gand­hi:

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlight­ened of all the polit­i­cal men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spir­it: not to use vio­lence in fight­ing for our cause, but by non-par­tic­i­pa­tion in any­thing you believe is evil.

Gandhi’s con­cept of satya­gra­ha, which rough­ly trans­lates as “devo­tion to the truth,” appealed to Ein­stein, per­haps, because of its prin­ci­pled stand against polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy and for a kind of moral com­mit­ment that depend­ed on self-scruti­ny and inquiry into cause and effect. Like the counter-intu­itive the­o­ries of Ein­stein and Rus­sell, Gand­hi biog­ra­ph­er Mark Shep­ard writes that the con­cept of satya­gra­ha is “a hard one to grasp”–Especially, “for those used to see­ing pow­er in the bar­rel of a gun.”

For more archival record­ings of Ein­stein express­ing his views on reli­gion, war and peace, and sci­ence, vis­it Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media’s On Being web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

Josh Jones is a writer, schol­ar, and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.  

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Watch the Only Known Footage of the Legendary Bluesman Lead Belly (1935 and 1945)

in Music | January 2nd, 2013

Hud­die Led­bet­ter, bet­ter known as “Lead Bel­ly,” was one of the great­est blues musi­cians of all time. His songs have been cov­ered by hun­dreds of artists, rang­ing from Frank Sina­tra to Led Zep­pelin. Lead Bel­ly is also famous for what his biog­ra­phy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes as “the myth­ic out­line of his life”:

Born cir­ca 1885 in rur­al north­west Louisiana, Lead Bel­ly ram­bled across the Deep South from the age of 16. While work­ing in the fields, he absorbed a vast reper­toire of songs and styles. He mas­tered pri­mor­dial blues, spir­i­tu­als, reels, cow­boy songs, folk bal­lads and prison hollers. In 1917, Lead Bel­ly served as Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son­’s “lead boy”–i.e., his guide, com­pan­ion and protégé–on the streets of Dal­las. A man pos­sessed with a hot tem­per and enor­mous strength, Lead Bel­ly spent his share of time in South­ern pris­ons. Con­vict­ed on charges of mur­der (1917) and attempt­ed mur­der (1930), Lead Bel­ly lit­er­al­ly sang his way to free­dom, receiv­ing par­dons from the gov­er­nors of Texas and Louisiana. The sec­ond of his releas­es was large­ly obtained through the inter­ven­tion of John and Alan Lomax, who first heard Lead Bel­ly at Ango­la State Prison while record­ing indige­nous South­ern musi­cians for the library of Con­gress.

In 1935 the March of Time news­reel com­pa­ny told the sto­ry of John Lomax’s dis­cov­ery of Lead Bel­ly in the short film above. Although the script­ed film will strike mod­ern view­ers as dubi­ous in some respects (March of Time founder Hen­ry Luce once described the series as “fak­ery in alle­giance to the truth”), the news­reel is nev­er­the­less a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of Lead Bel­ly, who was about 50 years old at the time, along with Lomax and Martha Promise, Lead Bel­ly’s wife. At one point Lead Bel­ly sings his clas­sic song, “Good­night, Irene.”

Accord­ing to Sharon R. Sher­man in Doc­u­ment­ing Our­selves: Film, Video, and Cul­ture, the 1935 Lead Bel­ly news­reel is the ear­li­est cel­lu­loid doc­u­ment of Amer­i­can folk­lore. Lead Bel­ly did work for Lomax after his sec­ond release from prison, as the news­reel says, accom­pa­ny­ing him back East to serve as his chauf­feur. In New York Lead Bel­ly per­formed in Harlem and also came into con­tact with left­ist folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Lead Bel­ly became known as the “King of the Twelve-String Gui­tar.”

Three Songs by Lead­bel­ly, the only oth­er film known to exist of the great blues­man, was made ten years after the news­reel. The footage of Lead Bel­ly per­form­ing was shot  in 1945 by Bland­ing Sloan and Wah Mong Chang, and edit­ed two decades lat­er by Pete Seeger. The film begins with scenes of the grave­yard in Moor­ingsport, Louisiana, where Lead Bel­ly was buried after his death in 1949, accom­pa­nied by an instru­men­tal ver­sion (with hum­ming) of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” Lead Bel­ly actu­al­ly per­formed six songs for the film, but only three could be sal­vaged. Seeger is quot­ed by Charles Wolfe and Kip Lor­nell in The Life and Leg­end of Lead­bel­ly as describ­ing Sloan’s work as “pret­ty ama­teur­ish”:

I think that he record­ed Lead­bel­ly in a stu­dio the day before, then he played the record back while Lead­bel­ly moved his hands and lips in synch with the record. He’d tak­en a few sec­onds from one direc­tion and a few sec­onds from anoth­er direc­tion, which is the only rea­son I was able to edit it. I spent three weeks with a Movieo­la, up in my barn, snip­ping one frame off here and one frame off there and jug­gli­ing things around. I was able to synch up three songs: “Grey Goose,” “Take This Ham­mer,” and “Pick a Bale of Cot­ton.”

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Relat­ed con­tent:

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax: The Land Where the Blues Began

Hear 17,000+ Tra­di­tion­al Folk & Blues Songs Curat­ed by the Great Musi­col­o­gist Alan Lomax

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

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