Memphis ’69

★★★★ Dir: Joe LaMattina

FAT POSSUM. DVD

A bountiful time capsule of Delta blues and beyond.

A crew of roots-rooting hippies produced the three-day 1969 Memphis Country Blues Festival and ensured that Delta blues elders were captured on film. Bookended by Stax soul star Rufus Thomas (with The Bar-Kays) and blues-rocker Johnny Winter, country bluesmen included Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes & Yank Rachell, Furry Lewis and 106-year-old Nathan Beauregard. At the time, the blues was being handed from the generation who’d been born into it to a younger one of mostly white musicians, and the latter are featured as well. Twenty-five-year-old British blues woman Jo Ann Kelly sounds older than Beauregard, and John D. Loudermilk performs his song Tobacco Road – already a folk and rock standard. Other highlights include experimental acoustic guitarist John Fahey and rarely seen cult heroes Insect Trust, performing their eclectic sonic mix with future music historian Robert Palmer on clarinet.