You See Me Laughin': The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen, the 2002 documentary by director Mandy Stein that follows Fat Possum Records founder Matthew Johnson and the delta blues musicians from Holly Springs, Mississippi his label represents, including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, Asie Payton, Kenny Brown, and CeDell Davis, whose "Let Me Play with Your Poodle" opens this post.
Fat Possum has drawn some criticism because of the potentially exploitative manner in which Johnson (who is white) has run a record company devoted almost entirely to selling music by black musicians, much in the way Columbia Records' subsidiary Okeh sold exotic "race records" to white audiences in the early 20th century. Additionally, historical blues aficionados would likely scoff at the way in Fat Possum has made some dubious hip-hop remixes of R.L. Burnside's music and teamed with pop-punk label Epitaph to increase sales. However, Johnson is blunt about his feelings on these decisions, saying, “There are not enough purists around to support a company that just makes records that all sound like they were done in 1931. We’ve got to somehow take what we think is the spirit and integrity of blues and bring it into this century.”
Stein and Johnson seem to be acutely aware of this criticism and address it in the documentary. Johnson is shown visiting Burnside at his home to check on his health and see to it that he goes to his scheduled doctors appointments. They even discuss hiding the money Burnside makes from touring so that he can continue to collect unemployment checks.
Regardless of whether or not Fat Possum is unfairly benefiting at its musicians' expense (every record company is inherently exploitative to a greater or lesser degree), I have to question the way in which this documentary portrays the eventual extinction of this culture as a foregone conclusion. Some have described Johnson's work as "a race against time" and even the subtitle "The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen" shows the fatalistic attitude Stein and others have towards these musicians.
This mentality is reminiscent of the the stance taken by many early ethnomusicologists, such as Frances Densmore (below), whose certainty that Native American culture was nearing its demise at the hands of white settlers prompted the recording of hundreds of Native American songs in the early 1900's, without ever questioning the Manifest Destiny expansionism that threatened the original inhabitants of this continent.
By acquiescing to the notion that the hill country way of life has no chance of survival in the modern world and choosing to adopt a merely curatorial, preservatory attitude towards these musicians' music, we turn a blind eye to the historical and present-day failures of our educational, medical, and economic systems to provide for the various peoples that populate this country.Then again, if Burnside, Kimbrough, Ford, Payton, Brown, and Davis had job security and healthcare, maybe they'd have no more blues to sing.
Blues at the Crossroads
Fat Boys
Interview with Matthew Johnson
Fat Possum label keeping blues alive
Affluent White Man Enjoys, Causes the Blues
I really love the historical background you give on "race records" here. I also felt that the Fat Possum Records documentary tended to reduce the blues to a mating call. Nearly every singer in the documentary is described as unusually sexually active and I do not think that all of the references to endurance were confined to the guitarists playing abilities. Maybe it is the genre, but I wonder if this isn't a little problematic.
ReplyDeleteDrawing comparisons between the recording of Ho-Chunk songs to Johnson recording hill country blues reminds us of the continuous cultural steamrolling that goes on and how technology plays a role. It also reminds us of the Edward S. Curtis "The North American Indian" photographic project nearly 100 years ago and all the issues surrounding it, yet to be completely sorted out.
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