Blues America

Episode two
When the Rolling Stones insisted on having Howlin’ Wolf perform with them on US teenybopper show ‘Shindig’, the producers consented on the assumption that the legendary bluesman was in fact a novelty animal act. Such unwitting condescension became the norm for blues performers as their core black audience drifted away to soul and R ’n’ B, to be replaced by white hipsters in such of vicariously and ‘authentically’ gritty kicks. This closing half of a fine primer examines such troubling issues without passing judgment – although the inclusion of ‘The Healer’, John Lee Hooker’s grim 1989 collaboration with Santana, may offer a hint of the filmmaker’s stance.

If anything, two episodes aren’t enough for a genre far richer and more diverse than popularly assumed. The parade of extraordinary characters (Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Skip James…) passes by too quickly for their stories to be adequately explored, but it’s an admirable effort that should have you enthusiastically trawling countless back catalogues by the time the series ends.