Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, Vancouver Playhouse, Saturday, July 29, 5:30 p.m.
A new documentary on Indigenous musicians involvement in the creation and shaping of North American popular music culture premieres at the Playhouse as part of the Drum is Calling Festival.
The film, made by directors Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana, focuses on music icons such as Delta bluesman Charley Patton, jazz singer Mildred Bailey, guitar slinger Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Robbie Robertson with archival material interspersed with new interviews.
Research into the subject was initially inspired by the Smithsonian Institution exhibit “Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians In Popular Culture,” created by Tim Johnson and Stevie Salas, for the National Museum of the American Indian, which ran at the NMAI in Washington, D.C., from 2010 to 2011, and in New York City from 2012 to 2013.
Johnson and Salas, who are from Mohawk and Apache cultural backgrounds, used Brian Wright-McLeod’s massive 2005 study, Encyclopedia of Native Music, as the starting point for their own project.
The two contacted Bainbridge at Rezolution Pictures, one of the filmmakers behind the 2009 Canadian documentary Reel Injun, to take the research further into the film world.
At the Sundance Film Festival this year Rumble was awarded the “World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling.”
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MILDRED BAILEY
Jazz singer Mildred Bailey, an early idol of crooners Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, has rarely if ever been associated with Indigenous culture. Raised on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho she moved to Seattle at 17 and worked as a sheet music demonstrator at Woolworth’s. Her brother, Al Rinker, sang with Bing Crosby in the Rhythm Boys vocal trio in Spokane. Crosby first heard Louis Armstrong and other Chicago black jazz musicians from listening to Bailey’s record collection, according to Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins. She helped her brother’s band get on their feet when they moved down to L.A. In Rumble, Tony Bennett says he learned his vocal phrasing, improvisation and style from Bailey. She was a huge musical influence on popular music culture throughout the 1930s with her own catalogue running into hundreds of titles. “As Long As You Live” rehearsal outtake from 1938 session with Mildred Bailey and Her Orchestra: bit.ly/2uBCb8q. Columbia Records recording of “Darn That Dream” featuring Bailey singing with Benny Goodman and his Orchestra topped the pop charts in 1940 (alternate take): http://bit.ly/2vRetTY
CHARLEY PATTON
Charley Patton, a rollin' and tumblin' microcosm of the American South, had some Choctaw ancestry. Jack White talks about the seminal importance of the Delta bluesman: bit.ly/2vMNjO8 and in a 1929 session for Paramount Records Patton sings about going to The Nation in "Down the Dirt Road Blues": http://bit.ly/1MnrsQQ.
JIMI HENDRIX
Grandma Nora Hendrix (born in Georgia with part Cherokee heritage) talks to Jack Webster in 1970: bit.ly/2uGdDJE; the band talks to Terry David Mulligan in Vancouver: bit.ly/2v1hN1z and plays "Killing Floor": bit.ly/2gQNLTi.
JESSE ED DAVIS
Kiowa/Comanche session-man extraordinaire Jesse Ed Davis played on everything from Gary Lewis and the Playboys records (with Leon Russell's Wrecking Crew) to Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies Man (with Phil Spector) to The Monkees "Last Train to Clarksville." Interview in L.A. with KMET-FM´s B. Mitchell Reed about growing up in Oklahoma and his move to L.A.: bit.ly/2u2f7vN.
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE
On To Tell The Truth TV show broadcast in 1966: bit.ly/2w3U6Cs.
LINK WRAY
Jimmy Page listening to Link Wray’s “profound” Rumble: bit.ly/1MZhS2G.
ROBBIE ROBERTSON
The Last Waltz Stratocaster: bit.ly/2u0UVdN and The Band performing “King Harvest”: bit.ly/1kIduPJ.
CHANTAL KREVIAZUK
Kreviazuk isn’t in Rumble but she performs Friday, July 28 as part of the Drum is Calling Festival. The musician researched her Aboriginal heritage on her mother’s side in CBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?: bit.ly/2uGpNCs.
WILD TCHOUPITOULAS
New Orleans Mardi Gras “Indians” featuring George Landry with the Neville brothers band, The Meters, "Meet De Boys on the Battlefront" (1976): bit.ly/1Yms24b.
HOWLIN' WOLF
Charley Patton protege performing on Shindig May 20, 1965 introduced by Brian Jones and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones: bit.ly/1kkjlmj.
Rumble will also have a theatrical release at Vancity Theatre beginning Aug. 11 with Ostwelve, a.k.a. Ronnie Dean Harris, will perform a 25-minute set in the atrium from 8 p.m. prior to the first screening on Aug 11.
