Review of Colin James Presents The Blues Masters

Introduction

When I feel a little down, or a little masochistic, feeling that I deserve to suffer, I have a couple of Radiohead CDs that get me feeling nice and miserable. I guess what I`m trying to say is that when The Blues Masters fell on my doormat, I initially felt a little ill-equipped to review it. A musical genre that I was completely unacquainted with (Not counting the occasional Lenny Henry sketch) gave me pause for thought, but I quickly decided that it would be an opportunity to expand my appreciation of diverse musical styles.

In 1966, several of the most acclaimed Blues musicians came together to record several tracks for a television programme. This DVD packages that archive footage and presents the choice moments of that recording session. Presented by Colin James, The Blues Masters showcases 12 blues tracks. Colin reviews the recording session and introduces each artist and the song.

The tracks are:-

Muddy Waters - Got My Mojo Workin`
Otis Spann - Blues Don`t Like Nobody
Mable Hillery - How Long This Train Been Gone?
Brownie McGhee - Cornbread and Peas
Sonny Terry - Hooray, Hooray, These Woman is Killin` Me
Brownie McGhee - Born and Livin` With The Blues
Sunnyland Slim - Tin Pan Alley
Otis Spann - T`Ain`t Nobody`s Business If I Do
Willie Dixon - Crazy For My Baby
Willie Dixon - Bassology
Muddy Waters - You Can`t Lose What You Never Had
Muddy Waters - Bye Bye Baby, Goodbye

Video

Blues Masters is presented in a regular 4:3 format. Colin James` segments are a soft colour picture taken from the original US source. The archive recordings are obviously black and white and have even lower resolution and technical quality. That said, there is no sign of damage to the picture and the image is fresh and as clear as you can expect.

Audio

You have a choice of DD Stereo and DD 5.1 sound. This is all pretty much irrelevant, as the original source was no doubt recorded in mono. What it really means is that you have a choice of having the sound localised to your television or each speaker getting an equal share. It felt as the surround gave a better experience filling the room with sound, but I guess that`s down to personal preference.

Features

The disc`s presentation is quite nice, with a fifties style to the menu, with neon highlighting the menu choices. There is a separate review that has Colin James talking about the recording session for about 40 seconds. The chapter selection has been relabelled as a jukebox with some nice graphics to indicate this. This allows you to access each track separately as you would guess. There is a minor glitch on the first page change though. There are no subtitles.

Conclusion

I found my toes tapping along with some of the tracks and in general the music was quite agreeable. As I stated, I`m not a blues aficionado and can`t really speak critically of the choice of music on the disc. Quantitatively, there is only 42 minutes of footage, including the intros by Colin, so depending on the price point; you may want to think twice about shelling out. However there is a big but attached to this disc, and his name is Colin James. I may not be an expert on the Blues, but I have some standards when it comes to music and my appreciation of it. Music should speak for itself and should be pure and unadulterated. That isn`t what you get here. When the programme started playing, I thought I was watching the Fast Show, specifically a Jazz Club sketch, nice. Colin James is that John Thompson character brought to life. What`s worse is that he commits the cardinal sin of talking over the music. This is completely inexcusable on any music purchase. You expect this behaviour on radio, but if you are shelling out for music, you don`t want to pay for a VJ into the bargain. Just when I thought it couldn`t get any worse. Colin pulls out his guitar and decides to jam with Willie Dixon on Crazy For My Baby. Yes through the magic of television trickery, Colin becomes monochrome and inserted into the original footage. His guitar playing is unremarkable, but he can`t sing to save his life. By this time, my thoughts towards Colin James were less than complimentary. Just when I thought the joke was over, the final track loses half the picture completely to make some space for some RIPs for the deceased stars of this disc. If Colin wanted to enthuse about the music, he should have made a separate documentary and left the music as is.

Summing up, we have not a lot of blues music, completely ruined by the inane wittering and bloated ego of the presenter. If you are a fan of blues music, I`m sure that there are better alternatives available. Even if there aren`t, save your money and buy some CDs instead, there are better ways to appreciate music than this. I`m marking the content for the music alone but the overall mark takes into account the presentation.