Product: Cadillac Records [Blu-ray] (2008)
Rating: 4.0
Reality vs entertainment
I happened to reach adolescence at the same time we moved to a virtually all Black pocket of poverty known as Marin City, CA. There, I heard a type of music that immediately addicted me. KDIA in Oakland, later KWBR broadcast an unending stream of genuine blues, R & B, and soul, not aimed at Whites, or caring what they thought. Big Don Barksdale and Bouncin' Bill Doubleday held court, filling me with a love for the music that I have never lost It was everywhere, in every home, every car, every place, and I couldn't get enough. Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Sun House and all the all Delta Blues and Chicago Blues were my gods. Not old enough, nor well-heeled enough for the club scene in SF, the radio was my connection that fed my addiction. I knew all about the difficulty of life for those men and women as they struggled just to survive and make their music heard, and seethed with fury when slick White boys like the Beach Boys and Pat Boone started to steal the real music and get air play while my heroes were seldom heard. I agree large parts of this movie are fictional, but the rough life and the hardship are not. I believe racism will blight this movie, and it will never get the play it deserves, just as the "race" music didn't. Yes, it is fictionalized, yes, it does leave out some great players, and yes, the music is not perfectly reproduced. How could it be, considering the actors aren't the originals? They do a pretty damn good job in my opinion. They also have not had to live the abject poverty and open violence of the virulent discrimination of the times that informs the original men. I think many of the Greats would be bemused to find that every great musician now pays tribute to their influence and true genius; I think even the incredible Keith Richards never fully understood why an angry and hostile Chuck Berry was so brusquely dismissive when he agreed to play with Keith. If you weren't there, if you didn't live through it, no amount of book larnin' and movies are going to truly make you understand just how bad it was, and just how hard it was. Or just what a miracle it is that the music still endures.Accept Cadillac Records for the tribute it is, and absorb what you can.