Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous stuff....
Review: from a different era. My first opportunity to see legends of the blues like Lonnie Johnson, Fred McDowell, T-Bone Walker, etc. Great audio and visual footage. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: "Blues the way is was meant to be ~ American Festival 62-66"
Review: Get ready for some great blues, from the legends to the modern masters, acoustic to the electric featuring essential performances covering the last half-century of blues by the greatest of the great blues performers. Entire album reeks with every word and note from artists who aren't holding anything back. This has the feelings music is supposed to have, especially blues and this in right up there with the best of the best.Sit back and enjoy "The American Folk Blues Festivals 1962-1966 Vol. 1", featuring Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Mama Thorton, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf some of the legends that gave us our favorite genre...BLUES! Each cue is dead on, with detailed liner-notes and a little history of their background and accomplishments. This DVD is proof that once and for all Blues...was then and is very much alive and well. Blues is still some of the best music around...gotta love it! Total Time: 80 mins ~ Hip-O Records 602498604120 ~ (8/26/2003)
Rating: 
Summary: What happened to the soul?
Review: I found these two dvd's a major disappointment. I fully understand their historical importance and ultimate influence in spreading the blues throughout Europe. For the most part, however, the performances are wooden, uninspired, and almost embarassing to watch. I can forgive the distasteful racial stereotypes given the historical period, but I have to wonder if only the academic blues types will find interest here. Despite the best of intentions, the main problem here is that one-half of the blues equation is left out of these performances--that is, the interplay between performer and audience. The blues artists in these dvd's play either to a TV camera or to an audience in white shirts and ties who seem totally bewildered by what they are hearing. Totally lacking is the interplay between the bluesmen and their audience which is what produces the "soul" in the blues. That's why the best blues is always performed in a club setting where there is plenty of whooping and hollering, drinking and smokin, and egging the musician on. Unfortunately, you'll find none of this excitment in these performances.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome, but incomplete -- the producers are butchers
Review: I have a pretty good collection of blues videos, and I have obtained many of these performances as low-quality videos. When I got these DVDs, I was hoping for a complete copy of the performances from these festivals. Unfortunately, the producers of the DVD mixed and matched performances from different festivals, and did not show the original broadcasts from start to finish. What we are left with is not only incomplete, but the performances are out of context. In the original broadcasts, there is continuity. On this DVD, we have some great videos, but it is more of a compilation than anything else. I'm waiting for someone to finally release the original broadcasts. Missing are many of the best performances, such as Sleepy John Estes and Hammy Nixon. Still, the quality of the videos is superb. I have to give it 5 stars because of the performances, but the producers get 0 stars for butchering the original tapes.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Slice of Americana.
Review: I'm not big on writing reviews, because most of the time I just can't be bothered. After seeing this outstanding DVD, I just had to step up to the plate and tell all the blues loving people out there to buy this DVD. Being a blues lover for over 30 years, I've collected a generous amount of blues cd's, but never anything like this. I mean, to see Sonny Boy Williamson, Lonnie Johnson, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, ect. on stage doing complete preformances, well , I still can't believe it. This certainly has to be the holy grail of blues music. I just can't believe that all there years, these videos are surfacing for the first time. Leave it to the Europeans, to capture all the glory of there shows. Here in the states, these blues giants were treated like second citizens, but in Europe, the red carpet was rolled out and they were treated like heros.
The video production of this DVD is very good, considering it was the early 60's. It's all in black and white which was just fine for me. The music on the other hand, was just something I thought I would never see in my lifetime. And to double your pleasure, you have to also get Vol. 2, which also must be seen to believe. I just can't help to wonder,if these two videos are just comming to light, how many more are out there, waiting to be restored. There must be more, but for now these will do just fine.
Please do yourself a big favor. If you're a lover of classic blues, run, don't walk to your nearess video store and buy these DVD's.
Rating:
Summary: Killer
Review: I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but whoever rates this less than five stars can kiss my rosy red baby. The Wolf footage is worth the cost of admission all by itself. The T-Bone Walker footage is worth the cost of admission, as is the Lonnie Johnson, the Sonny Boy, etc. This and Volume 2 of the same series are absolute must-haves for anybody interested in blues. And anybody who could watch the Wolf footage and say that it didn't have soul must be, as O.V. Wright put it, blind crippled and crazy.
Rating:
Summary: The best Blues videos I've ever come across
Review: I've been collecting Jazz and Blues records for nearly 50 years and these 2 DVDs covering performances by America's premiere bluesmen at the American Folk Blues Festival in Germany in the mid sixties represent the very best Blues videos I've ever come across. Otis Spann who is my favorite blues pianist plays on several of the titles on Volume I and he was definitely at his very best in these concerts. Back in the late 60's I went to see Muddy Waters and his band who where playing at the "New Penelope" on Sherbrooke street in Montreal, and, to this day, I've always maintained this was the very best blues performance I had ever watched. I also often said it was too bad that a musical performance of such quality had not been preserved on film.
Well, I now stand corrected. Performances of similar quality have been captured on these two DVDs. I enjoyed these Blues concerts so much, I watched and listened to them without interruption for more than 3 hours. These two DVDs are real gems.
Rating:
Summary: Very well done, great sound.
Review: If you like the blues at all you will love this one. There are no bad performances and the sound quality is really good. It like a snap shot in time of the 60's. You can't go wrong with this one.
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Summary: Crucial blues history
Review: In 1962, two gutsy German concert promoters flew a host of top African-American blues musicians overseas to perform a string of shows in France, West Germany, Scandinavia, and England. The package tour was so successful it became an annual event that ran until 1970. For four years -- 1962-1966 -- these concerts were televised by Südwestfunk, one of Germany's broadcast networks. Using state-of-the-art cameras and audio equipment, Südwestfunk producers taped performances by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Lonnie Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin' Hopkins, and a passel of other greats. Unseen for 40 years, these well-preserved tapes were recently rediscovered, transferred to DVD, and released as a two-disc set, The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966.
Viewing these DVDs is like stumbling into a time warp: Rarely -- if ever -- did these musicians perform on American TV in the '60s. Consequently, there's precious little domestic footage of these giants coursing through the data stream. In fact, most blues fans have never actually seen Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin' Hopkins, or Howlin' Wolf work their mojo. But now we can, thanks to these discs.
Some highlights: The poised and urbane Lonnie Johnson, who started recording in the mid-20s, performs a swinging blues accompanied by a young Otis Spann on piano and the masterful Willie Dixon on upright bass. Backed by a piano trio, T-Bone Walker delivers a stunning version of "Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong." His playing is packed with the trademark phrases and fat, archtop tones that set the standard for electric blues guitar in the '40s. It's exciting to watch Otis Rush -- armed with an Epiphone Riviera and looking sharp in his suit, skinny tie, and shades -- fill "I Can't Quit You Baby" with fluid, reverb-drenched lines. A 29-year-old, Strat-wielding Buddy Guy makes several appearances in one of the killer house bands. Howlin' Wolf turns in three supremely intense performances with a young Hubert Sumlin on lead guitar. As Sumlin wrenches quivering bends and stinging vibrato from his P-90-equipped goldtop Les Paul, we hear the sounds that Eric Clapton would build on two years later in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.
One of the most amazing performances comes from Mississippi Fred McDowell, who plucks wicked slide riffs on an weathered acoustic archtop in "Going Down to the River." McDowell was 61 when this song was taped, yet his tight vibrato, razor-sharp intonation, and burning eyes prove he was in peak form. Thumbing his thin-line electric and staring intently into the camera, John Lee Hooker unleashes a menacing boogie, "Hobo Blues." We can only imagine what the good burghers in TV-land thought about Hooker's carnal rhythms. Sonny Boy Williamson spins a chilling tale of betrayal in "Nine Below Zero," and then joins alpha-bluesman Muddy Waters and his band in a rousing "Got My Mojo Working."
Half the performances in this collection were shot in front of a live audience -- a group of enthusiastic, but very proper young Germans -- in a formal concert hall. It was a novel arrangement: Many of the listeners had never before seen live blues or even African-Americans, and most of the musicians were more comfortable wailing in smoky clubs and noisy juke joints than entertaining rows of attentive spectators. It's amazing to watch both parties use a mutual love of music to bridge their superficial differences.
The remaining performances occur on elaborate stage sets -- some evoking Chicago streets, others rural roadhouses. Seen from today's perspective, these theatrical backgrounds can seem strange, quaint, or even patronizing. But in early-'60s Germany, such visual enhancements were likely necessary to emphasize the cultural aspect of this exotic and compelling music.
In addition to the many marvelous songs culled from four years of the Südwestfunk broadcasts, we're treated to some incredible bonus footage from 1969. On the first disc, Earl Hooker does a hilarious parody of hillbilly music in the dressing room, and then goes berserk onstage with his Univox Les Paul copy through a Sound City half-stack. On the second disc, Magic Sam borrows Hooker's rig to rip through "All Your Love" and lay down a grinding boogie. Both discs contain a gallery of photos shot by Stephanie Wiesand during the various tours, and are packaged with informative and well-illustrated liner notes. We learn fascinating background details, including how during WWII the Gestapo arrested Horst Lippmann -- one of the festival's two promoters -- for publishing newsletters on the forbidden topic of American jazz.
It's fair to say that these folk blues festivals altered the course of popular music, and especially guitar. Jimmy Page, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards were among the many young British musicians who sought out their blues gods when they rolled into England as part of an AFBF tour. The Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, and Animals are among the many British R&B bands that sprang directly from these encounters. We're lucky to have such an emotionally satisfying chronicle of this pivotal moment in blues and rock history.
Rating:
Summary: The Real Deal!!!!!!!! Unbelievable footage!!!!!
Review: Just got finished watching this last night and I was blown away. From Otis Spann to John Lee Hooker to Muddy Waters to Sonny Boy Williamson to Willie Dixon and on and on this is one dvd that anyone who loves the blues must own. COMPLETE PERFORMANCES!!!! One of the greatest music dvd's ever released. I can't wait to pick up volume 2. Picture and sound quality is outstanding. Crank up your speakers, sip on some wiskey, and let the blues flow like blood from your TV.
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