"'CHICAGO BLUES' is an angry film. To document Chicago blues at its source, the British director Harley Cokliss went to South Side clubs, storefront churches and homes. He wound up with both a performance film and an anti-travelogue on ghetto life. It is a stark, forceful combination. Although it was made in 1972, 'Chicago Blues' is having its New York theatrical premiere tonight at the Bleecker Street Cinema as part of the Greenwich Village Jazz Festival's film series. Without condescending to viewers, 'Chicago Blues' sketches the history of the music - the rural blues that came to Chicago with black migrants from the South and was transformed by urban life and electric guitars. Johnie Lewis, who moved to Chicago in 1943, plays a country-blues about being a 'poor boy in a strange city,' and later a bluesy gospel song. Willie Dixon, a major blues songwriter, improvises a Mississippi-style field holler. Floyd Jones, in his living room, plays a country-style blues about the stockyards. And the congregation at the Liberty Union Church sings an exuberantly out-of-tune hymn - the blues in its Sunday clothes. ..."
NY Times
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