Blues Under the Skin

A mixture of documentary and fiction that alternates between bluesmen - from those on the chain gangs right up to BB King - singing and talking about their work, and a classic blues story set in Harlem about a girl who quits her man. The mixture is not a wholly comfortable one, the story and the acting of the young couple being too self-conscious to stand up to the naturalness of the bluesmen themselves. But the music survives on its own, and Amelia Cortez, a real old blues lady playing the mother-in-law, holds the story together with her reminiscences.