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Various Artists
YOU SEE ME LAUGHIN’: THE LAST OF THE HILL COUNTRY BLUESMEN
(Fat Possum)
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With performances by the late Junior Kimbrough and interviews and music by R.L. Burnside, T-Model Ford, Kenny Brown, and CeDell Davis, this documentary captures the blues magic that was still present in the Mississippi hills and the northern Delta in the ’90s. Today, Kimbrough is dead and Burnside is too ill to perform and Ford’s edge has blunted as he’s gone deeper into his 80s. This is also the story of Fat Possum Records, which raised these former farmers, lumbermen, tractor mechanics, and bootleggers to national prominence and now is as shaky as contemporary blues itself despite forays into rock with groups like the Black Keys and the Heartless Bastards. Iggy Pop and Jon Spencer, who championed Kimbrough and Burnside, respectively, make cameos to talk about their attraction to the music — though Pop doesn’t get many of the details of Kimbrough’s lyrics or the bills they shared right. At times, the film dips into the same exploitative "black savages" mythology that Fat Possum has used to market its African-American blues artists, with Ford and Burnside led into irreverent recitations of their murder records. But director Mandy Stein and her crew also capture the humor, sadness, humanity, and vitality of these men and their music. And for the first time, Burnside accompanist Brown, a recording artist in his own right, gets overdue credit for his role as the label’s secret weapon — talent scout, session man, tour driver, and, now, torch bearer of the Mississippi hill-country sound.
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