America's Blues

"I'm not surprised that America's Blues has been winning awards. It does a better job than any blues documentary I can think of—and I mean any—in placing the music in dialogue with the full range of its contexts: not just African American social history, but jazz, film, literature, drama, tourism, and fashion. Patrick Branson and Aaron Pritchard have avoided what I'd call the "usual suspects" syndrome in the matter of interviewees, giving screen-time not just to a broad array of contemporary blues performers ranging from Leo "Bud" Welch and Bill Sims, Jr. to Samantha Fish and Jimbo Mathus, but to scholars such as Houston A. Baker, Jr. and Patricia R. Schroeder, foreign-born entrepreneur Theo Dasbach, and jazz trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard. This documentary manages to celebrate the inescapably African American roots and continuance of this great American music and, without seeming contradiction, document its spread far beyond African American communities. America's Blues is a winner—and a must-see for any blues fan, scholar, or performer."

--Adam Gussow, associate professor of English and Southern Studies, University of Mississippi and author of Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition