“I can’t imag­ine my life, or any­one else’s, with­out music,” says film­mak­er Mar­tin Scors­ese. “It’s like a light in the dark­ness that nev­er goes out.” So begins Feel Like Going Home, Scors­ese’s fas­ci­nat­ing and at times lyri­cal doc­u­men­tary on the ori­gin and evo­lu­tion of the blues.

Feel Like Going Home (shown above in its entire­ty) is the first of sev­en install­ments, by sev­en direc­tors, in the PBS series The Blues. It fol­lows musi­cian Corey Har­ris as he traces the roots of the Blues from the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta back to West Africa. The doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views and per­for­mances from con­tem­po­rary artists like Taj Mahal and Willie King, as well as archival footage of leg­ends like Son House, Mud­dy Waters and Lead Bel­ly.

“I’ve always felt an affin­i­ty for blues music,” Scors­ese told PBS. “The cul­ture of sto­ry­telling through music is incred­i­bly fas­ci­nat­ing and appeal­ing to me. The blues have great emo­tion­al res­o­nance and are the foun­da­tion for Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music.” Scors­ese served as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the series, which includes episodes direct­ed by Clint East­wood (Piano Blues) and Wim Wen­ders (The Soul of a Man). The com­plete sev­en-part series is avail­able on DVD as Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues–A Musi­cal Jour­ney.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

Ani­mat­ed: Robert Johnson’s Clas­sic Blues Tune Me and the Dev­il Blues

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

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.

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

Beck Hansen is the ulti­mate musi­cal changeling. His career has tak­en him from ear­ly anti-folk begin­nings to the lo-fi col­lage art of his major label debut Mel­low Gold.  He has per­fect­ed tongue-in-cheek white-boy funk on Mid­nite Vul­tures and sad sack coun­try trou­ba­dourism on Sea Change. His mas­tery of gen­res and styles and abil­i­ty to shift from rev­er­ent homage to irrev­er­ent par­o­dy on a dime is per­haps matched only by the sad­ly now-defunct Ween. But with his lat­est release, Song Read­er, Beck leaps out of the ranks of pop chameleon and into that of the Amer­i­can Com­pos­er.  In per­haps the great­est exper­i­ment in retro musi­cal crowd­sourc­ing, Beck released his last album as a book of sheet music—20 songs in all, with lyrics—and asked the fans them­selves to arrange, play, sing, and record the songs.

Plen­ty of peo­ple have tak­en up the chal­lenge. A col­lec­tion of Song Read­er interpretations—from sim­ple acoustic gui­tar treat­ments to lush piano-and-strings arrangements—is avail­able here (each with accom­pa­ny­ing videos). Most recent­ly, an ensem­ble called the Port­land Cel­lo Project has tak­en on Beck’s “album,” enlist­ing the tal­ents of a hand­ful of vocal­ists. In the video above, watch the cel­lists per­form “Title of this Song” with Lizzy Elli­son at Portland’s Aladdin The­ater. You can hear the full record­ing of the Port­land Cel­lo Project’s Song Read­er below, and lis­ten to Beck explain the gen­e­sis of Song Read­er on NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered” here.

via NPR

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.