Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads
by Robert Mugge
from Shout Factory
This superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country. What Arkansas native and former Memphis stalwart Palmer knew, and Mugge captured on film, was that the blues was not only alive but still intimately woven into the daily lives of rural blacks.
Palmer, a former rock musician and Memphis Blues Festival cofounder best known for his bylines in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, had already chronicled the saga of Southern blues in his seminal book that provides the film's title. He's an astute guide, and Mugge underlines this role by pairing him with British rocker Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), whose avid interest in the music makes him an effective foil.
The film's real triumph, however, rests in the team's success in capturing modern day blues survivors and inheritors playing in the bars, juke joints, and barns of delta country. Palmer, who had returned several years earlier to the delta to capture these artists for his scrappy Fat Possum label, introduces us to the now-amplified but still elemental blues of R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, and other keepers of the faith. Mugge, whose profiles of Al Green, Sonny Rollins, and other musicians probed their cultural and artistic contexts with intelligence and sensitivity, captures both the music and the milieu in crisp color footage. Deep Blues thus triumphs as a testament to the blues' deep roots and an unintentional eulogy for Palmer, who would pass away in the mid-'90s just as the gut-bucket music of Burnside and Kimbrough served notice that the blues were alive and kicking. --Sam Sutherland
Last of the Mississippi Jukes
by Robert Mugge
from Sanctuary Records
Gather at the River - A Bluegrass Celebration
by Mac Wiseman
from Bmg Special Product
Gospel According to Al Green
by Robert Mugge
from Winstar
Gospel According to Al Green is a fascinating 1984 documentary about soul music's most insinuating singer, Al Green. Directed by Robert Mugge, it captures an expansive Green talking about his career and performing in front of a military crowd in a hotel ballroom. Green's high, seductive voice, passionate performing style, and sinewy stage presence make the musical sections of the film compelling--even if you're not a fan of gospel music. Because, at this particular juncture in his career, that's what Green was performing, though the songs have the slow-boiling insistence of his best soul songs. In the interview segments, Green talks about how he wrote his songs and the religious conversion experience he underwent that caused him to put his pop-music career aside and serve the Lord--and how, when he gets cooking onstage, people don't seem to care that when he's singing about "Love and Happiness," he's praising God's name, rather than singing to a woman. Green, notoriously press-shy, is remarkably open discussing his tragic encounter with a spurned lover, who dumped boiling grits on him and then killed herself. --Marshall Fine
Sun Ra - A Joyful Noise
by Robert Mugge
from Winstar
One of jazz music's most entertaining and eccentric figures is profiled in Robert Mugge's hourlong, 1980 profile of the late bandleader-keyboardist-composer Sun Ra. "I don't consider myself one of the humans," he once said. "I'm a spiritual being," who was reputed to eschew the usual jazzman's indulgences of drugs and sex and who, despite the weird trappings (he and his big band, the Intergalactic Omniverse Arkestra, usually performed in glittery costumes that combined African, alien, and thrift-shop styles), infused his music with a strong sense of discipline and precision. Here we see Ra and the band rehearsing and performing; their "joyful noise" is free, sometimes chaotic, but also clearly blues-based, somewhat reminiscent of Monk or Mingus (there's even a rendition of "'Round Midnight"). Ra is also interviewed surrounded by the Egyptian artifacts and antiquities that were an important element of his "mythocracy." He clearly loves having an audience--and how can you not enjoy listening to a guy who also chooses the White House as a backdrop for solemn pronouncements like "I'm not a part of history--I'm more a part of mystery, which is my story"? --Sam Graham
Black Wax
by Robert Mugge
from Winstar
The poet, vocalist, and songwriter Gil Scott-Heron is both the descendant of the African griots and the forefather of rap. In the early '70s, he boldly proclaimed that "the revolution will not be televised," and in the '80s he warned us of the "New World Order" with his prophetic and satirical single, "B Movie." The gifted filmmaker Robert Mugge filmed the controversial artist in performance at the now-defunct Wax Museum in Washington, D.C., in 1982. Mugge alternates between the electrifying soul/jazz/funk grooves of Scott- Heron's Midnight Band and his witty and deep monologues about racial politics with a wax figure of Uncle Sam and his dead-on commentaries on urban life in the nation's capital. Included on this DVD is the bonus selection "Is That Jazz," Heron's swinging shout-out to the jazz legends and a rebuke of those who try to limit it. Nobody tells it like it is like Gil Scott-Heron, and nobody ever will. --Eugene Holley Jr.
Hawaiian Rainbow
by Robert Mugge
from Winstar
Hawaiian Rainbow examines Hawaii's traditional chants, percussion, ukulele, slack-key and steel guitar, male and female falsetto and lush vocal harmonies, all of them accompanied by authentic Hawaiian hula.
Return of Rubén Blades
by Robert Mugge
from Winstar
This 1986 documentary by filmmaker Robert Mugge chronicles the life, music, philosophies, and opinions of the singer, bandleader, political activist, and Harvard-trained lawyer Rubén Blades. Mugge captures Blades's intelligence, passion, and charisma in a variety of locales: from the bandstand of New York City's famed club, S.O.B.'s, where Blades and his ensemble, Seis del Solar, performed, to his heartfelt recollections of growing up in United States-dominated Panama City. Whether he's talking about the political history of his country with columnist Peter Hamill of the [New York] Daily News, recording a track with pop superstar Linda Ronstadt, or swinging the son montuno/salsa grooves of "Buscando America," "Tiburon," and his "Mack the Knife" cover, "Pedro Navaja," with his group, Rubén Blades successfully blends art and politics. In the film he promised to return home and run for president--which he eventually did, unsuccessfully, but heroically. --Eugene Holley Jr.
Follows the singer to Harvard where he gets his Master's Degree in International Law, to his old neighborhood in Panama, to California for a recording session with Linda Ronstadt, and to New York for a performance at S.O.B's.
Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads
by Robert Mugge
from Fox Lorber
This superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country. What Arkansas native and former Memphis stalwart Palmer knew, and Mugge captured on film, was that the blues was not only alive but still intimately woven into the daily lives of rural blacks.
Palmer, a former rock musician and Memphis Blues Festival cofounder best known for his bylines in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, had already chronicled the saga of Southern blues in his seminal book that provides the film's title. He's an astute guide, and Mugge underlines this role by pairing him with British rocker Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), whose avid interest in the music makes him an effective foil.
The film's real triumph, however, rests in the team's success in capturing modern day blues survivors and inheritors playing in the bars, juke joints, and barns of delta country. Palmer, who had returned several years earlier to the delta to capture these artists for his scrappy Fat Possum label, introduces us to the now-amplified but still elemental blues of R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, and other keepers of the faith. Mugge, whose profiles of Al Green, Sonny Rollins, and other musicians probed their cultural and artistic contexts with intelligence and sensitivity, captures both the music and the milieu in crisp color footage. Deep Blues thus triumphs as a testament to the blues' deep roots and an unintentional eulogy for Palmer, who would pass away in the mid-'90s just as the gut-bucket music of Burnside and Kimbrough served notice that the blues were alive and kicking. --Sam Sutherland
New Orleans Music in Exile
by Robert Mugge
from Anchor Bay/Starz Home Entertainment
On August 29th 2005 hurricane winds torrential rains and a series of failed levees decimated The Big Easy and virtually destroyed one of the most unique music cultures in the world. In the months immediately following the Katrina disaster filmmaker Robert Mugge captured the shock sorrow and courage of the city's remarkable musicians as they struggled to rebuild their careers and revive their devastated community. Dr. John Irma Thomas Cyril Neville Marcia Ball Kermit Ruffins Cowboy Mouth The Iguanas and more are featured. Extras include music by Jon Cleary Big Chief Monk Boudreaux Marcia Ball Papa Mali and more.Song Titles:A History of New Orleans Piano (Cleary) Meet the Boys on the Battlefront (Boudreaux) That's What I Get (Ball) Keep Happy (Mali).Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 013138300188 Manufacturer No: P3001
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