Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Red, White & Blues

1	Goin' Down Slow / Tom Jones Live 5:02
2	Back O' Town Blues / Louis Armstrong Live 4:14
3	St. Louis Man / Dixie Four 2:32
4	Black, Brown and White / Big Bill Broonzy 2:42
5	Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air / Sister Rosetta Tharpe 2:29
6	Rock Island Line / Lonnie Donegan's Skiffle Group 3:21
7	Cry Me a River / Lulu Live 5:30
8	Générique / Miles Davis 2:48
9	Love Letters / Tom Jones Live 3:19
10	Bad Penny Blues / Humphrey Lyttelton 2:42
11	Stormy Monday Blues, Pts. 1 & 2 / Little Joe Cook 6:19
12	Hard Times / Tom Jones Live 3:54
13	Tell the Truth / Ray Charles Live 3:15
14	Hey Darling / The Spencer Davis Group 4:46
15	Shake Your Moneymaker / Fleetwood Mac 2:55
16	Have You Heard / John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers 5:53
17	Crossroads / Cream Live 4:14
18	Rollin' & Tumblin' / Jeff Beck Live 2:18
19	Lawdy Miss Clawdy / Tom Jones Live 2:21
20	Drown in My Own Tears / Lulu Live 4:53

Barnes & Noble

In the 1960s, the British went blues crazy, as a new generation started hungrily absorbing American sounds whose expressive power spoke directly to them. Soon, these blues-loving Brits were making their own hybrid music. Red, White, and Blues charts the growth of the British blues from its skiffle roots (Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line”) on through its '60s apex (John Mayall, Cream, Spencer Davis Group, Fleetwood Mac) to marvelous new collaborations between guitarist Jeff Beck and former British invasion popsters Tom Jones and Lulu. Telling examples of authentic American blues by Louis Armstrong, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Bill Broonzy, and Ray Charles are interspersed for reference. The British blues quickly recrossed the ocean during the '60s, profoundly influencing American rock 'n' roll. This absorbingly enjoyable album documents the fertile musical flip-flop that has characterized the interchange between the U.S. and the U.K. for some five decades now. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

Director Mike Figgis' documentary Red, White & Blues, one of the seven parts of the PBS-TV series The Blues presented by Martin Scorsese, is ironically named, since it actually concerns itself with the British response to American blues music, among other styles. Truth be told, the British, appreciating American music of the 1950s and earlier entirely through recordings, have always tended to mix things up, failing to acknowledge distinctions between jazz, blues, gospel, folk, and R&B that Americans take for granted. Figgis illustrates this tendency in his choices of vintage music, which draw upon the likes of Louis Armstrong, Big Bill Broonzy, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Miles Davis, and Ray Charles, not to mention the homegrown Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group's frantic aping of Leadbelly on the hit "Rock Island Line." Relatively little of this music is what an American blues fan would call blues, except in the sense of roots and influences. Figgis adds to this eclecticism the core band he assembled and filmed for the documentary, the performances of which are interspersed with the older tracks here. The band itself, led by Jeff Beck, is unobjectionable, but Americans may be taken aback by the singers, Tom Jones, largely thought of stateside as a Las Vegas lounge entertainer, and Lulu, who is remembered in the U.S., if at all, as the '60s pop singer of "To Sir With Love." (Van Morrison, who appears in the film, is not on the soundtrack.) Thankfully, there are also selections from British blues-rock legends such as Fleetwood Mac (in its Peter Green era, of course), John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, and Cream. But the overall selection is still one that will make American listeners marvel at the oddities of British taste. William Ruhlmann