AUSTIN, 10:45 p.m., Friday - "Blues is the music of survivors." That's the bluesman/actor Guy Davis in Sidemen - Long Road to Glory, a new documentary about unsung blues titans Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith. But he could be speaking for any number of musicians featured in SXSW Film this year.
The underdog, overlooked musician documentary has become a subgenre unto itself in recent years, thanks to the likes of Standing in the Shadows of Motown and the Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom. Sumlin, Perkins and Smith certainly fit the bill: For years they played in the shadows of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. They all grew up poor in the South and joined the Great Migration North to find a life with some dignity. The three sidemen, who died within eight months of each other in 2011, carved out respect and careers, if not fame and fortune. They inspired the British rockers, who seemed to pick up on the importance of electric blues before the musicians' own countrymen. Listen to Wolf's "Killing Floor," or Waters' "Mannish Boy," and you'll hear what these guys brought to the party.
The spitfire subject of Miss Sharon Jones! is also a survivor, in more than one sense. Told early on by a record executive that she was too short, too black, too, fat, too old, she built a dynamic soul machine with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, a tight-knit ensemble that plays with the tenacity and energy of the J.B.'s. and views each other as family.
The family got a scary jolt when Jones was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2013. Barbara Kopple's superb documentary captures a rough year in the life of the indomitable Miss Jones, all 4-foot-11 of her, as she tries to get healthy and her band tries to keep busy and stay fed.
Kopple shows Jones crumble a little , and lose her temper here and there. Mostly, though, she keeps plowing through with the force-of-nature energy that fans of her live shows delight in. She was built to survive.
Then there's Miles Davis, the mercurial trumpet master played by Don Cheadle (who also directed) in the jagged fantasia Miles Ahead. The film finds Davis at a crossroads, coked up, isolated and at war with his label, Columbia Records. Into this scenario walks a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) in search of a scoop. Is Miles coming back from his hiatus? What kind of musical left turn will he pull off next? And why are those people shooting at us?
The film is as unpredictable as Davis himself, and its rhythms match the splice-and-dub aesthetic that defines much of his '70s output. It also showcases Davis the adapter, who innovated his way through bop and cool jazz to the farthest reaches of fusion. He always seemed to stay a step ahead. He just kept surviving.
