Roger Allen3 said:So it’s worth watching 🙏 I think I saw the trailer for that Film... does that kid have some kind of guitar shredding contest with Steve Vai at the end?? 😍 Everything points to 😍
Aha! The kid plays the Blues—sort of a mashup of Ry Cooder, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Johnny Winter styles—while Vai brings his signature metal/Rock vibe. And yeah, the kid totally shreds on the Bach at the end (he was a classical guitar student).
The whole story is about Blues folklore, selling your soul to the devil at the crossroads, and all that good stuff. Joe Seneca is absolutely brilliant in the Film as Will Brown, even if Maccio is... well, you know. You can really feel those Karate Kid vibes in the movie. You definitely need to grab the Ry Cooder soundtrack, though. The only thing that bugs me is how Maccio clearly doesn't play the guitar—what his hands are doing doesn't match the sounds at all—but man, that soundtrack is one of the best ever made. It's so good that I actually started learning slide guitar just because of that "feeling bad" Blues solo he plays when the girl leaves him. Even today, that's still one of my favorite slide solos. Seriously, the soundtrack is so killer it's part of my "holy quartet" of Ry Cooder albums: Boomer's Story, Crossroads, Paris, Texas (another soundtrack, and honestly the best soundtrack in cinema history), and Jazz. By the way, the movie only shows a tiny snippet of that "feeling bad" Blues, and there are tons of other genius tracks just playing in the background.
If you're into the Blues, you've gotta get the Film, but the soundtrack is a total must-have. Also, there are a few songs in there from other albums. Like, when Will Brown and Lightnin' are waiting at the crossroads, he plays Vigilante Man from the Into the Purple Valley album, which is another masterpiece.
To get ready and understand the backstory, you should dig into some Blues folklore and early history. For a cool intro, check out this piece on Charley Patton:
http://www.celticguitarmusic.com/patton1.htmPatton was a generation before Robert Johnson—basically, according to legend, Patton sold his soul to the devil to impress someone, and Patton himself was a student of Henry Sloan, whom Blues historians pretty much credit with inventing the Blues. Patton has the earliest recorded Blues recordings. The "Holy Trinity" of the Blues—the guys who really defined the genre—would be Sloan, Patton, and Robert Johnson. That lost Robert Johnson song from the '30s is the whole core of the Film. And don't forget, Rock was born out of the Blues; without those three guys, today's music would sound completely different.
I’d definitely recommend picking up as much Patton and Johnson as you can. Yazoo Records put out complete collections a few years back, so it's actually super easy to find them now.
