Frankie and Johnny (1966)

Frankie and Johnny is a pretty middle of the road Elvis vehicle. This is neither one of his strongest films or one of his weakest. If this movie was to serve as anyone's introduction to Elvis, it would not make them a fan, the way a film like King Creole (1958) would, yet Elvis fans (like myself) will have fun watching it.

Though this movie did make money, Elvis was certainly less relevant at this time than he had been before. Rock and roll had moved from the type that Elvis helped popularize to the more experimental music Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were making. That is what makes this film so odd, it seemed to be trying to make Elvis less even less relevant to mid-60's audiences. This is a turn of the century musical of the type that populated movie theatres over 20 years earlier and Elvis was singing songs from that era rather than rock and roll. Young rock and roll fans must have found this movie date. d even in 1966.

Yet none of that means it was not an enjoyable film. Frankie and Johnny had an excellent supporting cast. Harry Morgan is one of the better Elvis sidekicks and provides some good laughs here. Sue An Langdon often steals the show with a great comic performance. She puts all her energy into this part and makes many jokes that are only decent, quite funny with her fantastic delivery. To be honest the comic relief is one of the best parts of this film. Elvis gives a typically good performance here. He is hardly given a part that allows him to show his acting chops, but he still does quite well with what he is given. Of course, his singing voice is as good as ever. I love Elvis' performance of Hard Luck, this is the bluesy side of Elvis at its best. Beginner's Luck and Please Don't Stop Loving Me are typically lovely Elvis love ballads and who cannot love hearing Elvis' voice on one of these songs.

On the other hand the story is typical Elvis fare that we are already very familiar with. It is told well but there is little to make it stand out among many similar movies. Along with the musical highlights, there are also some lackluster song choices. I don't think any of us really wanted the king of rock and roll to perform a song like Petunia the Gardener's Daughter. This song was not a fun type of cheesy that came in Elvis' early years, but rather an embarrassing type of cheesy that is simply not fun to watch or listen to at all. This is as bad of a song as ever appeared in an Elvis film.

All in all this is an enjoyable movie for fans but non-fans should start with one of Elvis' films from the 1950's.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Summer Concert Series: Devil at the Crossroads (2019)

Robert Johnson is one of the most fascinating figures in American music. His music itself is mysterious and defies explanations and for a long time his life was just as mysterious. Little facts were known and myths as mysterious as the man's music began to pop up. The most famous of these is that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for incredible musical talent, a myth that seems to be supported by lyrics to songs like Me and the Devil Blues. This fascinating documentary not only addresses these myths, but also talks about how Johnson changed the blues and was a forerunner to rock and roll. Incredible musicians like Keith Richards and Keb Mo' talk about Johnson's music with incredible reverence. However where this movie really succeeds is when it discusses these myths. I will admit before seeing this film I knew Robert's music but not much about his life. What I heard here was completely fascinating and new to me. This movie gives a great insight into this brilliant musicians strange life while still keeping an aura of mystery around it creating a fascinating and one of a kind documentary. 

-Michael J. Ruhland

Summer Concert Series: Keith Richards: Under the Influence (2015)

If you are looking for a documentary that will give you deep insight into Keith Richard's personal life, than this is far from the film for you. This movie is in many ways the equivalent of hanging out with Keith and talking about music. Keith spends little time talking about the Rolling Stones or his solo work, instead focusing on his love and devotion to the blues, country music, reggae and early rock and roll. If you are a fan of the music he is talking about, there is little no insight here, but he discuses this music with such a passion that it is fun listening to him talk about it.  When someone is passionate about an artform, whether that is music, film, books, etc. because they enjoy talking about it so much that you enjoy listening to it. It doesn't matter if you know everything they are saying it is still fun to just hear their passion. Director Morgan Neville understands this and simply lets Keith talk and adds little else to the table. The result is a movie that is honestly not that cinematic or informative but is still a lot of fun.

This being a movie completely and utterly about music, naturally the songs are a huge reason to watch. Keeping with the theme of this film, most of what he plays are covers, but really good and heartfelt covers. Two that stood out to me as his brief version Merle Haggard's Sing Me Back Home and the lovely closing version of Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene. There are no extended guitar solos here or real rocking out. Keith keeps his musical offerings here on the acoustic side, but partly because of this it has the close intimacy that he and so many us love about the blues and country music. There is a laid back but still soulful feeling to his renditions of these classic songs. For a movie about one of The Rolling Stones, there is little sex, drugs or rock and roll here. But there is plenty of music and isn't the music why people became fans of Keith Richards in the first place?

-Michael J. Ruhland

Summer Concert Series: ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band From Texas (2019)

ZZ Top is often a band whose look and eccentric style have often over shadowed their actual musician ship. However after watching this documentary, it is hard not to feel that this is unjustified. These men are extremely talented musicians and they have put out some really good music. The music is always the focus of this documentary, which is perfect for ZZ Top. As the film discusses, the band always kept their private lives private, preferring to let their music speak for itself. As the movie brings up this is why the band's eccentric look works for them, it makes them feel as if they were somehow something bigger than life, while helping obscure who these people are. While of course listening to the members of the band talk about their music, will give us a look into their personalities, little else is given away about who these people are offstage. We find out a little about Dusty's childhood as well as Frank's marriage and drug addiction, but nothing else. From this film alone, you don't even know if Dusty or Billy ever married or had children and this is fine with me. Mystery only helps to make musicians so appealing (this may be part of why I'm a Bob Dylan fan) and do we really need to know anything about ZZ Top besides that they are really cool guys with beards (well except for the one whose last name is beard) who play a mixture of the blues and rock and roll? Once you get down to this, it is clear speaking about the music is the best way to make a ZZ Top documentary. This movie does give us a lot of insight into the music as well as where the eccentric style of the band came from. It also gives us some dang fine music and listening to them perform songs like La Grange, Brown Sugar and Blue Jean Blues show the band has lost none of their talent for performing these songs, and hold up just as well as clips of older performances of ZZ Top songs like I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide.

This documentary only follows the band up to their 1983 album, Eliminator. While this may disappoint some fans, I feel it is a wise thing to do. Too many documentaries try to fit too long of careers into too short of a time. To be fair there are still times the movie feels rushed but it is never distractingly so.

I definitely recommend it to both fans of the band and newcomers.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Album Review: Rough and Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan

One thing that is very important for any Bob Dylan fan is to always except the unexpected. After a trilogy of albums in which he covered old pop standards (his last album of original songs was 2012's Tempest), no one excepted him to unleash such an incredibly moving and haunting piece of songwriting on the world as Murder Most Foul with no prior notice and in a time where it seemed like the world had been put on hold. Before we knew it two more great original songs came out back to back and then we learned, this songs were going to be part of a new album of original songs coming out in no time of all. Truth is we didn't even have time to fully gather the excitement for this album that is so rightly deserves. This is not only an excellent album but one of Bob's finest in decades. He shows here that even 79 years old, he is still a master.

Truth be told this is a very dark album at times. This is of course best shown in the quickly infamous Murder Most Foul, which relates not only JFK's assassination but how America lost much more than one man with his death. Yet this album is far from a collection of dirges. Humor has been an important part of Bob's music as far back as his acoustic days in the early 1960's and it is seen all throughout this album. Black Rider even contians a penis joke relating to the grim reaper. Though a lot of these songs are slower paced blues songs, Bob still shows that he can still rock and roll with the best of them with such songs as False Prophet and Goodbye Jimmy Reed. The slower songs reflect much of the style Bob has embraced since the late 1990's. First off Bob has become very much a blues man since then, which is in no small part due to his aging voice having a true blues feeling to it. This is most shown in Crossing the Rubicon, an electric blues number with a real Muddy Waters feel to it. Secondly much of this album features very limited and sparse musical accompaniment which creates a real haunting feeling that stays with you long after the album is through. This causes you to reflect more on the lyrics and the mood of the songs. The lyrics certainly show Bob at his best. There are times when these songs give a straight forward but thought provoking message, while at other times they have the sense of mystery only Bob can do so well. In the later, one doesn't need to fully "get" the lyrics as what is important is the beautiful way they are constructed and how well Bob phrases each word (while Bob's voice has often been criticized, few singers can phrase words better). While you can listen to this album in the background while doing something else, you would be missing out on so much. If you give this album your full attention, it will reward you more than you could ever except.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Ray Charles: "I See You With My Heart"

If you like music than you like Ray Charles. I love music, therefore I love Ray Charles. The man could do any type of music (Country, Jazz, Blues, R&B, Rock, Classical) and do it all extremely well. It is sad that he fell into that horrible trap that gets too many great entertainers, drugs. These things can mess up the life anyone who takes them and they certainly did that with Ray. Though his drug addiction was in many ways a focus of the following 1962 article from TV Radio Mirror, it is not the only thing it talks about. My favorite parts of this article are about how Ray never let his blindness stop him from anything, despite that people kept telling him that he couldn't do it. This is an inspiring and very uplifting message story about not letting other people get you down. However that does make the drug part of this article much sadder.

If you have trouble reading any of this pages click on them and zoom in with your touch screen.


As a bonus here is Ray perfroming a very soulful rendition of the country music classic, You Don't Know Me.










-Michael J. Ruhland

Summer Concert Series: Festival (1967)

A very thought provoking folk music documentary with great music. This film shows footage of the 1963 and 1966 Newport Folk Festival.

If you have a similar taste in music to me, you will know as soon as you see the opening credits that this movie is going to be a pure musical treat. Performers in this film include Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Peter Paul and Mary, Buffy Sainte Marie, Michael Bloomfield,  Mississippi John Hurt and Paul Butterfield. If I had one complaint about the music it would be that we only see and hear Johnny Cash perform a brief snippet of I Walk the Line and other than that he is largely absent from the film. However there is no other complaint about the music in this film, it is near perfect as music can be. One of the highlights of the film is Bob Dylan's incredible performance of Mr. Tambourine Man. Though many with more traditionally great voices than Bob Dylan have performed this song no one sings it quite like Bob. This is a mysterious and magically unexplainable song and Bob's rough voice just heightens this quality perfectly. We also are treated to one of Bob Dylan's earliest pure rock and roll performances. At a festival that was all about folk music, Bob performers the radical Maggie's Farm. This is not only a rock and roll song but a proud and defiant announcement that Dylan was leaving the folk scene for rock and roll. The performance of this song is pretty darn hard rocking for its time and one can only imagine how the audience at this festival felt hearing this from some one who was know as one of the top folk singers of his day. Though this performance has found its way onto various rock and roll documentaries, it is still incredible every time I see it. Though Bob had abounded political protest songs at this time and all of his performances here have no political overtones at all, Peter, Paul and Mary perform some of Bob's past protest songs including The Times They Are A Changing and Blowing in the Wind. Peter, Paul and Mary seem to be favorites of director Murray Lerner, as we get a lot of songs from them. Luckily they sound extremely good here. Joan Baez is certainly also in top form here as her voice has never sounded better and her song choices are perfect. Paul Butterfield and Mississippi John Hurt show us what the blues are all about in their magnificent performances, while Michael Bloomfield gives us a new style of white blues-rock. All this shows that the blues can never be defined or understood they are just a part of the people who play the music.

This movie also brings up some very thought-provoking moments. It discusses how while folk music is a genre of music for and by the people, how the iconography of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez contradicts that. This movie discusses whether this iconography is good or bad from various positions. There are some audience members, who feel that the worship of them takes away from the relatability and realness of their music. Despite that many other audience members go insane when Bob takes the stage and hound Joan for her autograph. It is interesting to the contrasting ways the two deal with this bigger than life status. Joan finds it sweet and healthy (although she feels a bath wouldn't hurt some of those kids), and she jokes while signing autographs that the only affect this has on her is "a bloated ego." Bob on the other hand is obviously uncomfortable with this. He rushes to his car and hides from the people. I get the feeling this isn't out of rudeness, but rather that the situation and the crowds make him so uncomfortable that like a scared little child he rushes to safety. Then again I have social anxiety so maybe I am imparting who I am on to who Bob Dylan is. Another thought provoking part of the movie comes from Son House discussing the blues and how he feels this new rocking electric type blues goes against what the music is all about. Masterful editing (editors on this film include Alan Heim, Michael Marantz and Gordon Quinn) and great direction intercut this with blues-rock musician Michael Bloomfield talking about his type of blues music to create an intelligent and thought provoking debate between two great musicians. This movie also calls into question the counter-culture movement and whether these college kids truly understood what they were talking about. Unlike on the previous issues this film seems to give a distinct answer to that question. A middle-age man states that he approves of the young people questioning his generation, because it shows they are thinking. Joan Baez says that she believes the kids know what the singers and songwriters are talking about. Pete Seager has the best comment on this stating that this festival is where "Everyone gathers together to be a non-conformist."

Unfortunately this incredible film did not and still doesn't receive the attention it deserves. One reason sometimes given for this is that the justifiably famous D.A. Pennybaker documentary about Bob Dylan (also featuring Joan Baez) was released a month before this film. Hopefully more people will discover the excellent movie this is and enjoy it as much as I did.

-Michael J. Ruhland