Sonny Rollins and Al Green documentaries

[mjzee]

When Robert Mugge's documentaries "Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus" (1986) and "Gospel According to Al Green" (1984) were made, they were intended as a permanent record of two seminal musicians at a very specific point in their careers. The central figures themselves had axes to grind: Sonny Rollins -- and even more so, his manager and wife, Lucille -- wanted to silence the critics and fans who insisted that his contemporary work was inferior to his classic albums of the '50s and '60s; Al Green was compelled to explain to the world why he gave up singing pop music and devoted his life to spreading God's word.

Today, those particular points don't matter as much as they once did. Mr. Rollins is treated as a living legend, whose every performance, young and old, is rightfully cherished; Mr. Green himself made another career change and since the mid-1990s has been performing secular as well as sacred music, knowing full well that audiences will accept him no matter what he sings.

But these two films, newly released on DVD by Acorn Media, hold up well as vital profiles of their subjects at turning points in their lives, each combining a concert film with a journalistic backstory. They also remind us how much the genre has changed in the past two decades, a period of ever-shortening attention spans.

More here:

Rollins and Green

[BruceH]

I saw these both back in Boston, when a local art theater was showing loads of jazz documentaries (they showed the Artie Shaw film Time Is All You've Got too.) Those were the days....