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The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 | 
 enlarge | Actors: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker
Studio: Hip-O Records
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $14.97
You Save: $5.01 (25%)
New (25) Used (9) from $10.77
Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 11873
Format: Color, Compilation, Dvd-video, Black & White, Full Screen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.4 x 0.4
MPN: 000075009
UPC: 602498604120
EAN: 0602498604120
ASIN: B0000AYL2M
Theatrical Release Date: August 26, 2003
Release Date: August 26, 2003
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Unearthed some 40 years after the fact, this has to be one of the finest blues collections ever assembled on video. Thanks to a couple of young promoters who brought the musicians to Europe--where they were treated with a good deal more respect and dignity than in America--we get an extraordinary lineup of bluesmen and women: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace... the list goes on. Their concert performances (several in stagy but effective down-home settings) before a rather formal but appreciative German audience have them playing in some cool combinations (T-Bone Walker backing Memphis Slim, Otis Rush with Junior Wells), even introducing one another (Williamson on guitarist Lonnie Johnson, an elder statesman on the tour: "A very nice musician")--and all with great sound (mono, but still flawless) and visuals (in black and white). This is one for blues fans to treasure. --Sam Graham
Description
Reelin' In The Years Productions, in association with Experience Hendrix, bring you the American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966 Volumes One & Two. The AFBF was an annual event that featured the cream of American blues musicians barnstorming their way across western Europe every fall from 1962 through 1966. Recorded live in a small TV studio in Germany, these historic and unseen performances have been lost for nearly 40 years. Filmed with superb camera work and pristine sound, each DVD contains 18 complete performances from the greatest blues musicians of all time. Captured during their heyday in an era of scant video documentation, these DVDs are truly one of the most unique and precious visual documents of the blues. The American Folk Blues Festivals featured a dazzling array of talent that included such greats as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson playing alongside other legends such as T-Bone Walker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Memphis Slim and Big Mama Thornton to create the most significant group of blues artists ever assembled!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 I love this collection! November 11, 2008
View the bonus track first! Earl Hooker was one of the truly great guitarist. Mississippi Fred McDowell one of my all time favorite slide players is here, but only one performance. Sonny Boy Williamson is in fine form with "Nine Below Zero". Lonnie Johnson, one of the best, is here too! Other of my all tme favorites John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters are here also. Lots of performances to study and enjoy!
GOTTA HAVE IT June 28, 2008
Took a while for me to order these. Wasn't sure I'd be getting authentic performances. But, from the start, I was mesmerized. Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson? Somebody smiling on me. This is a real treat. And if you don't have your copy, shame on you.
 American Folk Blues, Vol 1 November 25, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It was good in the sense that it was historically accurate, the black and white didn't enhance it, but it was still OK. I personally like more electric blues and much of this was acoustic. I probably should have known that, live and learn, overall I'd rate it as a good "watch and listen"
IF YOU LIKE THE BLUES..... BUY THIS!!! IT WILL REALLY GROW ON YOU!!! August 19, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'v been avoiding writing a review about these dvd's (American Folk & blues festival vol 1, Vol 2, vol 3,) for a while now, mainly because I get so emotional when I think about them. So I wont even try. But I will say this much....The ONLY place in the world where you can see the fabulous T-Bone Walker on dvd... is on these sets (he appears on all 3 volumes). And where else are you gonna see Lonnie Johnson, Shakey Horton, Junior Wells, Big Joe Williams, Willie Dixon, Otis Span, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Mama Thorton, A very young Buddy Guy, and a very young Hubert Sumlin, Big Joe Turner, Son House, Koko Tayler, Lightnin Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Howlin Wolf, AND MANY MORE!!! YOU NEED TO HAVE ALL 3 VOLUMES FOR YOUR COLLECTION!
Get this if you have at least one eye or one ear! May 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
What Professor Donoghue says is the scientific description of what this is, and I can add little to what he says except yes.
This is worth owning. Save your money or steal one if you must, but this is a precious jewel. The only hope is if they have more video and a more extensive version can still be issued since these are excerpts from a series of TV broadcasts that were done over four or five years.
I hadn't studied up on Sonny Boy Williamson II (what Alex "Rice" Miller preferred to be called) previously, but his performance of "Nine Below Zero" here has turned me into a permanent devotee. There is so much in his articulate but not overly showy harp playing and above all his singing and standing and gesturing that translate to total blues and the entire majesty of Black men of his generation and experience as I remember them.
Likewise, you will never forget the magnificent presence and performance of Howling Wolf. As in every time I have seen him sampled on one of these videos, he was a giant musically, emotionally, and in his sheer existence. The little of Wolf here is worth the whole price. It's interesting to see Wolf's protege,the now senior Hubert Sumlin, one of the patriarchs of blues guitar as a very young man introduced as "Little Hubert."
As a Hooker fan, this is the only place I've heard of Hooker as a harmonica player.
What offends me as an African American sometimes blues player and lifetime student of the blues is the sets and approach used to present the artists in many of the clips. Almost every one of these artists was an urban blusician of great accomplishment, even if we see folk with deep country roots. These people's native environments were the boss clubs in Black America of the 1940s through 1960s. Some of these artists like Lonnie Johnson had performed and were still performing with the great masters of Jazz like Ellington and Armstrong.
Unfortunately, many of the performers are presented in the producers' fantasy of the rural south early in the 20th Century. It is really embarassing to see the opening sequence where T-Bone Walker, the master of sophisticated West Coast Blues whose setting for many of his recordings was with a swing combo or even with great swing bands like Erskine Hawkins band, presented as a country singer, playing acoustically (on his electric guitar???) in their version of a front porch in the country south. Walker was the prince of urban electric blues guitar's most sophisticated beginnings and closer to his contemporaries of the post war blues like Charles Brown who then dubbed "the Sephia Sinatras" than he was to great country bluesmen presented here like Big Joe Williams.
Blues clubs I was lucky to be taken to as a child in New York, or visited as a teen in Chicago and Mississippi were not all filthy dives. The setting to see these performers in a black context was the kind of bar or theater where folks would be dressed proper in their best, even if they didn't have a dime. Those were some merry places.
It is sad to see what such great masters of music and culture had to go through to keep themselves living. It is sadder that television in the USA never ever thought of doing anything remotely like this while these great women and men were alive! Justice would have been a special like this done on each artist presented here, not just one or two selections.
Still, if you do not own this DVD, you need to buy it or steal it, but anyone with at least one ear and at least one eye needs to own it.
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