Subtitling this Fat Possum documentary “The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen” was
a wise move. After all, most of the artists on that label’s roster are
far past retirement age; two of the ones featured here are being honored post-mortem.
And while these men also tend to breed like rabbits (Junior Kimbrough’s
legacy includes 36 children, most of them illegitimate), there’s no guaranteeing
their offspring will want to continue the tradition forever. This documentary
proves, even more than Possum’s audio releases, that the Hill Country
style of Mississippi blues remains a living, breathing thing, not just folk
art. But
for how long?

The first half of this video introduces the main players, living and dead,
on the label. Which is important, because their individual personalities have
never
been this well-defined on record: there’s Kimbrough, the cantankerous ladies’ man
whose reluctance to cover other artists helped give FP a cornerstone on which
to build; Cedell Davis, the badly-crippled savant whose disability forces him
into atonal butterknife slides; T-Model Ford, the neophyte who figured out the
music almost instantaneously once his heart was broken; and R.L. Burnside, the
farmhand and breakout star who literally learned his craft at the feet of the
masters. The second half delves into the relationship between the men and the
mainstream – their natural distrust of white businessmen, the controversy
regarding Possum’s endless remixes, and the way their legacy interacts
with famous fans like Iggy Pop, Bono, and Jon Spencer.

There’s only one full performance here, a rollicking festival version of
R.L.’s “Snake Drive,” but there’s still plenty of incidental
music framing the portraits (some excellent artwork also literally illustrates
these musicians’ wilder stories). But this DVD’s main point, subtle
but pervasive, is that these blues come from something larger than mere tradition;
the blues were arguably born in this part of the world, and more than one native
has claimed it resides in the very air, an inexhaustible natural resource. When
one of the interviewees stands near the burnt-out remains of Junior’s Juke
Joint, the ramshackle club that jumpstarted the label’s very existence,
he swears he can still hear music being played some nights. After viewing this
disc, you may well be tempted to go there and listen for yourself.