CHECKMATE Cadillac Records
May 15, 2009
The Chess Records biopic pays a much-needed tribute to the legends. Some of them, at least.
BY RICK ALLEN
The lives and stories of Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon and dozens of others are the stuff of which American cultural legends are made. Their origins range from below poor to middle-class but all are self-made men who had to deal with the usual trials and uncertainties of a non-mainstream musician's life. They also had to deal with the oppressive and often brutal racism behind the physical, psychological and economic assaults that were made no less painful by being expected and familiar.
True, the Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf of Cadillac Records (released to theaters by Sony Pictures last December and recently out on DVD) are not the "real" Muddy and Wolf. But the Davy Crockett of the Walt Disney TV films that were enthralling baby boom kids right around the time of the events of this film took place wasn't real, either. Accurate or not, the Disney films kept Crockett's name alive and it inspired many of those baby boom kids to look deeper into American history in general and Crockett in particular. Those who did found out how easily pop culture can turn men who traded in slaves (Jim Bowie) and who fought so that Texas could eventually enter the Union as a slave state into "freedom fighters". If Cadillac Records piques interest in Muddy, Wolf and the blues and if it spawns more films about those incredible, fascinating, brilliant men then more power to it.
That's the "good" about Cadillac Records, director Darnell Martin's highly fictionalized account of the story of Chess Records, one of its founders, Leonard Chess, its music and some, but not nearly all or even enough, of the people who made and sustained it. Musician, blues lovers and music historians will have hours of playtime fun though, picking out the historical and musical inaccuracies, omissions and borderline slanders that run throughout.
Among the "bad" is the film's uneven attention to detail. The clothes, cars and furniture look great and appropriate. But one can easily imagine outraged guitarists world-wide exclaiming, "Where's Muddy's Telecaster?" A brief flash of one in a case and in a backstage bathroom scene and that's it. Sure, he played a Les Paul and other guitars, some which are pictured in the film. Many if these artists played whatever they could afford or was handy or new or intriguing to them at a particular time. But a film, especially because of the shortcuts and symbolism involved in movie making, should deal with its subjects' iconic paraphernalia. How acceptable would it be to have Stevie Ray Vaughan depicted playing a Gibson 335 or B.B. King with a Stratocaster? Even a non-musician would know that it just looks wrong.
It's the kind of discrepancy that makes every other detail suspect. The money shots should have the hero working his number one axe - Jupiter with a thunderbolt, not a .45. But there are some mouth wateringly beautiful instruments and pieces of equipment shown in the film and the music itself is handled surprisingly well considering only Beyoncè Knowles (Etta James) and Mos' Def (Chuck Berry) are vocalists by profession. Jeffrey Lewis ("Quantum of Solace") as Muddy Waters and Eamonn Walker ("Oz") do very good jobs of approximating the vocal styles of their real-life counterparts. Lewis' performance is watertight dramatically and vocally, his approximation of Muddy pretty good. But Walker, with a third or less of the screen time, does just as well dramatically. Faced with the near-impossible task of conveying the unique, eerie power and dynamism of a Howlin' Wolf vocal, Walker nails it admirably. As good as Walker is, one can't help but imagine the soul shaking surprise in store for those who, inspired by Walker's performance, seek out and hear the great Wolf for the first time.
As far as showing these and other musicians working their instruments, there are "real" musicians doing most if not all of the actual playing. The film's music producer and coach, drummer Steve Jordan, stands in for longtime Chuck Berry drummer Fred Below (who is depicted onscreen but not referenced by name except in the director's commentary); the Fabulous Thunderbirds' Kim Wilson handles harmonica for the Wolf and Little Walter characters; and several different guitarists, including Chicago bluesmen Eddie Taylor and Billy Flynn, handle that instrument for various characters. A particular treat is Hubert Sumlin's appearance onscreen as an unmade sideman alongside the actor portraying his younger self. When it came to picking someone to play the classic licks of Howlin' Wolf's right - and left - hand man, director Martin wisely went with the original.
Music films have gone a long way since the days when the hands of Cary Grant's Cole Porter (Night And Day) were kept hidden by the piano lid or when shots of the hands of an actual musician were clumsily cut in. While Woody Allen's Sweet And Lowdown had Sean Penn, as fictional jazz guitarist Emmet Ray, doing a very good job of moving his fingers at the right time, even non-guitarists were amused to see him furiously working the low end of the guitar neck while notes octaves higher than the ones available there were heard.
Cadillac Records is far better in that respect. And it's light years beyond the days when the pop bands du jour used to be shown on the beach playing electric guitars without an amplifier in sight. If Jeffrey Lewis isn't actually playing the guitar, or if it wasn't his playing that made it into the soundtrack, his fingering and timing are dead on. When Mos' Def's picking hand is shown in close-up he seems to be hitting the right strings at the right time and in the right rhythm. No one expects actors to play as well as the people they're portraying did or do, but they should look like they can. Through the actor's intense preparation (according to Martin, Lewis wore his guitar almost every waking hour of the day and took lessons in order to gain a natural familiarity) and the use of real musicians like Jordan and others as onscreen band members, the film's musical look and feel ring true and the music itself is effective and authentic.
The "ugly" of the movie - besides Cedric The Entertainer's clownish, superfluous, narration - is the casual way it dismisses people key to the story it's trying to tell. How can the story of Chess Records be told without a single mention of its co-founder, Leonard Chess' brother Phil? There is one brief scene included in the DVD extras but it didn't make it into the film. What's next; the story of the Two Stooges? Chess Records wasn't even Leonard's first shot at the business as the movie would have its audience believe. How can Willie Dixon, who wrote, performed on and produced a huge and significant share of the music that made the label what it was, be reduced to such a minor character? If people like Fred Below, Lafayette Leake, Otis Spann, Jimmie Rogers, Big Crawford, Johnnie Johnson and on and on are not going to be part of the dramatic action then their names and their contributions should be loudly and clearly referenced and defined.
And, if you will pardon the French, where in the bloody hell is John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddley?
Robin Williams had the perfect answer to those who expect more reality in films: "It's the movies... none of it is real." But sometimes, the most accurate and involuntary way to express the difficulty of accepting what Martin asks her audience to swallow is with an apoplectic "Oh come on!"
There may be no more significant moment for a rock and roll or any other type of popular music fan than the moment when they finally "get" the blues. When the realization hits of how much jazz, country, hip hop, soul, r&b and even bluegrass owe to the blues it is eye-opening and almost staggering. The American popular music road doesn't lead to Damascus. It leads to Detroit's Hastings St., Chicago's South Side, Beale St. in Memphis, 12th and Vine in Kansas City and the Mississippi delta. In turn, the paths from those places led, among other places, to Chess Records. Bluegrass, electric blues, modern country and western and rock and roll music all bloomed in the decade following World War II and Chess had a finger in most of those musical pies.
At the very least, Cadillac Records effectively conveys the musical excitement of the times it inhabits as well as poignantly bringing the era's social and musical injustices into painful focus. Chuck Berry's "eccentricities" are legendary. But how must it have felt to have been the man with a legitimate claim to having invented it see Elvis Presley, for all his importance and talent, proclaimed the King of Rock and Roll and know the reason why? Wouldn't that have the power to make someone just a little bit nuts? The film brings home the confusion and frustration Berry must have felt hearing the Beach Boys appropriate his music for "Surfin' USA" and claim authorship. This from a band led by Brian Wilson, one of pop music's best and most prolifically creative and brilliant songwriters. It was just so unnecessary and seems even more callous with the realization that it was probably not a consciously malicious act. The Beach Boys were probably just exercising the privileges that society allowed them; even barely post-adolescent white boys had the advantage over a full grown black man; even a famous one. It was the way things were done - songwriters are notoriously light-fingered anyway - and maybe it's more upsetting because of that.
The thought of Chuck Berry, the man who wrote "Johnny B. Goode," the song that could serve as the starter batter for rock and roll should every other example of it vanish, the man who turned the guitar into a cultural weapon and, directly and indirectly into almost a household object, the sight of this man, this great American artist, a musical hero and an icon despite whatever personal failings, eating bologna sandwiches and sleeping in his car because he was too proud to buy a hamburger served via the back window or kitchen door of a restaurant that wouldn't seat him or to stay in a "colored" motel, should be considered obscene and unacceptable even in retrospect.
Scenes like the one showing that are among the moments when Cadillac Records redeems itself.
The four main leads, Jeffrey Wright, Columbus Short (Little Walter), Beyoncè Knowles and Adrien Brody (as Leonard Chess), along with, especially, Eamonn Walker are almost better than the film deserves and each of the four artists - Muddy, Wolf, Etta and Walter - have stories fascinating, tragic, and deserving of their own films. If they don't get them, if they and the Robert Jr. Lockwoods, Lafayette Leakes, Otis Spanns, Jimmie Rogers etc. don't get their names and stories told in film and elsewhere, those names and stories are in danger of being as lost to history as those of the men who risked and gave as much or more alongside Disney's or history's Davy Crockett at the Alamo.
And that would and likely will be an American tragedy.
[Pictured: Jeffrey Wright at Muddy Waters, Columbus Short as Little Walter]
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