Doc Watch: The Blues

A couple of legends.
 
WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? (B+) - A faithful, fascinating look at the artist who melded classical music with blues, jazz and gospel and who was a powerful creative force in the 1960s and '70s.

Nina Simone's emergence in the 1960s, as a leading voice in the civil-rights movement, impatient with the tenets of non-violence and leaning more toward "by any means necessary."  She evolved into a downright revolutionary, and her political out-spokenness damaged her commercial viability until she fled in exile.

This is a family-authorized biography (her daughter was executive producer and contributes on camera), but it doesn't sugar-coat Simone's difficult personality or the demons she struggled with. Her ex-husband, Andrew Stroud, shows up, too. Through her diary entries and audio snippets of old interviews, Simone describes a hellish existence at the hands of the brutal Stroud, who also was her manager. A bandmate says Stroud worked her like a racehorse throughout the '60s. Their daughter, the poor thing, says they were both crazy. Simone eventually snapped.

By the end of the '60s, like the civil-rights and anti-war movements, she was defeated -- physically, emotionally, psychologically. She considered herself a mere ghost of her physical being, with a thin grasp on her sanity.

The joy of "What Happened" is the musical performances. Veteran documentarian Liz Garbus bucks the modern trend of fileting clips into frustrating snippets. We are treated to extended clips of some of her most popular songs and most riveting stage moments. Her version of Janis Ian's "Stars" (below) is devastating. Simone (born Eunice Waymon in 1933) cut her teeth on Bach, and she combines her facility on the keyboards with the scary ability to inhabit the songs she sings, as if to battle her demons fright by fright. Garbus chips away at Simone's puzzling facade like a sculptor. 

B.B. KING: THE LIFE OF RILEY (2012) (C+) - A polite, fawning documentary of the blues legend comes replete with sonorous narration by Morgan Freeman. The only warts included here are casually passed off as the antics of a harmless rascal (even by the women he cheated on).

A surprising amount of time is spent on the early years of Riley King, who would get his nickname as a DJ in Memphis, tagged as "Blues Boy King." Things get interesting in the second hour, when his influence if felt by the bands from the British invasion, and he finds a sympatico producer who helps create the 1969 signature hit, "The Thrill Is gone."

King is refreshingly candid in the interviews culled from various periods in his life -- on race relations, his sexual predations, and his musical collaborations. But it still feels too safe, as if King had veto power over the final product (released three years before his death in May). The talking heads -- Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton and other rock dinosaurs (has Bono ever passed up an opportunity to speak in a documentary?) -- ingratiate way more than they enlighten about the man's skills. And there's not nearly enough of King's music featured here, and what is provided is chopped up into bits.

BONUS TRACKS

Nina Simone, "Backlash Blues":



B.B. King, "How Blue Can You Get":



Simone, with Janis Ian's "Stars":