ROCKS OFF - The Rolling Stones Message Board

© 1972 Peter Beard
[THE WET PAGE] [IORR NEWS] [SETLISTS 1962-2003] [THE A/V ROOM] [THE ART GALLERY] [MICK JAGGER] [KEITHFUCIUS] [CHARLIE WATTS ] [RON WOOD] [BRIAN JONES] [MICK TAYLOR] [BILL WYMAN] [IAN STEWART ] [NICKY HOPKINS] [MERRY CLAYTON] [IAN 'MAC' McLAGAN] [BERNARD FOWLER] [LISA FISCHER] [DARRYL JONES] [BOBBY KEYS] [JAMES PHELGE] [CHUCK LEAVELL] [LINKS] [PHOTOS] [MAGAZINE COVERS] [MUSIC COVERS ] [JIMI HENDRIX] [BOOTLEGS] [TEMPLE] [GUESTBOOK] [ADMIN]

[CHAT ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [RESTROOMS]

NEW: SEARCH ZONE:
Search for goods, you'll find the impossible collector's item!!!
Enter artist an start searching using "Power Search" (RECOMMENDED) inside.
Search for information in the wet page, the archives and this board:

PicoSearch
ROCKS OFF - The Rolling Stones Message Board
Register | Update Profile | F.A.Q. | Admin Control Panel

Topic: Howlin' Wolf Story DVD (ssc) Return to archive
01-20-04 11:12 AM
Nasty Habits Times like these I really wish Rocks Off had a search engine. Did I carelessly miss some discussion of this incredible DVD -- just released last November? ]





I just saw it last night and I am still in shock at how good it is. There is natch the Stones/Wolf appearance on Shindig, which rocks. There's also cool interview footage with Jody Reynolds, Billy Boy Arnold, and Hubert Sumlin, to name just three, talking about the Wolf and coming up in the Chicago/Chess seen of the 50s and 60s. But most of all there is the Wolf, licking his guitar, bugging his eyes, screaming his lungs out, and having more physical presence sitting in a chair than ANY performer I've ever seen. Also featuring a drunken Son House heckling a Wolf performance, Bukka White unflappably playing great bottleneck while Wolf tries to throw him off his game with clever asides (this is the ONLY time on the DVD that someone actually manages to challenge Wolf's authority) and a glorious live version of "Dust My Broom" from 1966. (Lots of other complete live cuts, too, but the Dust My Broom is specially amazing.)

If this release has been discussed in the past I apologize, but anyone interested in the Stones' roots or the blues or in utterly rockin' great sounding wild ass music NEEDS to see this DVD.

More detailed review found here, among lots of other places:

http://www.audiorevolution.com/dvd/revs/howling_wolf_storyp1.html
01-20-04 11:56 AM
FPM C10 Although it's great, I was just the tiniest bit disappointed. Almost all of the highlights that you mentioned were taken from a great video I've had for a few years called "Devil Got My Woman". (And THAT has Skip James in it to boot!)Some of that stuff is shown from a different angle, and I'm enough of a trainspotter to be excited by that, but I thought there'd be more footage I hadn't seen. (For instance, the footage that was in the Scorsese series, in the Godfathers and Sons chapter, of Wolf doing "Evil (Is Going On)". There's more footage out there and I wanna see it! )

And WHY won't ANYONE show us ALL of the Shindig appearance without talking over it? It's in 25x5, and Bill Wyman's Blues Oddessey, and now this, and none of them show it in its entirety. This version shows more of Wolf shaking his ass in the last verse than I've seen before, but it inexplicably edits Brian's intro (it cuts out the part where he tells the host to shut up). Personally I've started thinking of Howlin' Wolf appearing on Shindig as the most important event of the 1960s, and I wish I had a copy of the whole thing.

I really liked the '64 appearance from German TV, but that's available (along with one or two other Wolf songs) elsewhere too. When Wolf stands up with his guitar he looks like one of the bears from Chuck E. Cheese!

The DVD also suffers from having that white guy who wrote a book about Wolf offering commentary. He overstates EVERYTHING he says. For instance. he goes on and on about Wolf being a GREAT slide player, "not only by the standards of his day but by today's standards." That's just not true. Wolf basically knew one lick. Like his harp playing, his slide playing was incredibly emotive, and he could say more with one note than some folks can with a dozen, but his instrumental skills were rudimentary. His VOICE, though, left EVERYONE in the dust. If the white guy wanted to commit my favorite sin of hyperbole, he shoulda done it in regard to the Wolf's incredible pipes.

Another part I thought was funny - Hubert talks about "all that money" that Muddy offered him to steal him away from Wolf, but in other interviews I've seen the actual figures. Muddy tripled Hubert's pay - from $25 a night to $75.

So my favorite parts were Sam Lay's home movies, and the interviews with the principals. But, as with ALL blues documentaries, I wish I could have the raw footage annd let the music do the talking.
01-20-04 12:26 PM
Nasty Habits
quote:
W Randolph Hearst wrote:
I believe this is the same documentary which screened at the Art Institute of Chicago's Film Center during the Chicago Bluesfest last summer. It was a premier and the filmmakers were at the screening if I recall correctly.




I believe that is correct, although this version allegedly has 30 extra minutes not released theatrically. Wish I had seen it in a big screen -- I found myself really wishing I could get some perspective on just HOW BIG the Wolf is -- he makes big hollow body electric guitars look like little cowboy acoustics. Thanks for the tip on Devil Got My Woman, FPM -- I will track it down.
01-20-04 12:56 PM
Moonisup the new deluxe edition of the cd with mick, charlie and bill on it is also a must-have
[Edited by Moonisup]
01-20-04 01:11 PM
BILL PERKS IN 25X5 BRIAN IS TELLING MICK TO SHUT UP.
01-21-04 06:28 AM
bez85 I read on a Wolf website that he was six foot six and at one time weighed 350. That Wolf DVD, although lacking in some aspects, is still the best thing to come out on him.. Highly recomended..
01-21-04 08:44 AM
Phog I agree, it's a keeper.
01-22-04 06:30 PM
stewed & Keefed I saw Howlin Wolf play live in 1969 at the Aurora Hotel,Gillingham England, He was fucking great.God it seems such a long time ago
01-22-04 06:46 PM
stonedinaustralia
quote:
BILL PERKS wrote:
IN 25X5 BRIAN IS TELLING MICK TO SHUT UP.



that's right BILL - and i think it's a very telling moment -after all brian has a big rave then mick trys to get a word in (to thank the jack goode for the opportunity to put Wolf on the show) and he's told to shut up

it really illustrates, to me at least, what keith (and others) has said about brian being an "asshole"




[Edited by stonedinaustralia]
01-22-04 07:31 PM
Nasty Habits Hey SIA!

I got your giftage last week!

Cheers!

They have been christened!

Christened with Maker's!

01-22-04 07:41 PM
stonedinaustralia my pleasure nasty

glad to hear they are of use, as i expected they would be

01-22-04 10:34 PM
parmeda For Nasty & Flea...
Guys, I missed out on a bunch of GREAT stuff this past weekend! Especially after reading this yesterday...
*******************************************************
BUDDY GUY HAS SOME FRESH IDEAS ABOUT THE BLUES

By Greg Kot
Chicago Tribune music critic
Published January 21, 2004

Buddy Guy's annual residency at his namesake club, Buddy Guy's Legends, usually finds the guitarist at his most relaxed and flexible, and this month's string of sold-out concerts is no exception. Once again, he's messing with our heads and most likely his own: Just what is the blues in 2004? Guy's got a few ideas, and they don't all lead back to the Louisiana sharecropper's farm where he grew up.

Dressed in a red suit and black fedora, Guy regaled an audience that included Cubs manager Dusty Baker and his coaching staff into the early hours of Sunday morning. Though Guy has piled up Grammys, sales and recognition since his 1991 comeback album, "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues," reaffirmed his crucial role in bridging blues and rock guitar, he remains a volatile stage performer who never plays the same show twice. There is no such thing as a Guy greatest-hits show; his residency is as unrehearsed as a conversation, and sometimes he doesn't always know when to hang up. But on Saturday, the booze was flowing and the mood was exceptionally loose, as Guy took chances with both his voice and guitar that could only be described as avant-garde: He may be among the last of the original blues men from the Deep South, but Guy's a modernist at heart, very much a part of a city musical landscape that prizes innovation over repetition.

Guy roams the crowd, he strums the strings with a drumstick, he smiles innocently and draws out the silences for dramatic effect in his most salacious songs. There is no such thing as a stock arrangement. Guy is more interested in veering off course than sticking to a road map.

This led to plenty of slack moments as the singer shifted course, his five-piece band scrambling to keep up, the audience caught somewhere between bemused and bewildered. There were too many solos parceled out to Guy's competent backing cast -- saxophonist Jason Moynihan, guitarist Frank Blinkal, keyboardist Tony Z, even bassist Orlando Wright got a turn -- especially during a wandering version of Bill Withers' "Use Me." More egregiously, no attention was paid to Guy's recent albums, among the best of his career: "Sweet Tea" and the acoustic "Blues Singer." And an annoying amplifier buzz sabotaged a few of Guy's own solos.

But Guy still brought a room-wrecking sense of adventure to his guitar playing. He built a universe of sound on Willie Dixon's "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man," which morphed into "Love Her With a Feeling" and "Hoodoo Man Blues." He also did justice to his old Chess Records-era classic "Let Me Love You Baby" and "Damn, Right I've Got the Blues," playing with dissonance and distortion as much as traditional blues voicings. Guy's singing, the most underrated aspect of his arsenal, remains a marvel. He slid around the notes with dexterity and daring on "Fever," the old Peggy Lee torch ballad, stretched the word "pain" into a dozen syllables on a nuanced reading of John Hiatt's "Feels Like Rain," and brought a countryish feel to "The Thing That I Want to Do."

Yet Guy wasn't satisfied. Was the audience with him? "You don't like this kind of blues?" he asked at one point. Afterward, in his dressing room, the doubts lingered. "I hope that wasn't boring," he said to a visitor. It was typical Guy in many ways: a sheepish, self-deprecating entertainer who nonetheless plays every show with nothing-to-lose bravado.

Across the hall, a half-dozen associates were burning hi-fidelity double-CDs of the performance to be sold to waiting patrons downstairs at $20 each. By documenting every note he's playing this month on CD, Guy is borrowing a successful gambit from jam bands ranging from the Grateful Dead to Phish. Guy has been doing it longer than either, and his live high-wire act continues to evolve. Even as he nears 70, Guy is still redefining what the blues can be. The legend still singing the blues.
********************************************************
Then...like as if this wasn't enough pain...I missed 'Paint The Town Blues' Weekend!!! ----> http://www.epagecity.com/site/epage/3867_162.htm

How in the hell did this happen? I am so mad at myself...
Rest assured boys & girls...I will not, I repeat, I WILL NOT miss the Blues Festival this June. Oh, no...I won't!

BEST VIEWED HIGH