Blues music has had sporadic usage in film over the years, often with large time gaps between appearances.  The first movie to feature blues music was the 1929 short St. Louis Blues starring Bessie Smith as herself.  Several movieswith all-black casts and showcasing popular blues singers appeared over the next two decades.  Ethel Waters received a singing role in Bubbling Over (1934), while Mamie Smith was prominent in Sunday Sinners (1940).  Such movies were often adaptations of all-black vaudeville acts, derivative of the minstrel shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Other films of this period to feature blues musicians in actual acting roles were a series of 1940's movies featuring Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five.  Reet, Petite, and Gone (1947), Look-Out Sister (1947), and others were more vehicles for showcasing Jordan's popular brand of jiving jump blues rather than developing a strong storyline.  Perhaps the biggest anomaly of blues on film is the 1956 short Big Bill Blues, shot in Belgium by Jean de Lire.  This atmospheric art house film features blues singer Big Bill Broonzy performing in a smoky European bistro.  In 1972, Motown executive producer Berry Gordy teamed up with Paramount to produce Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross as bluesy jazz singer Billie Holiday.  The next film to prominently highlight the blues was the comic hit The Blues Brothers (1980), with white comedians Dan Akroyd and Jim Belushi as the blues band frontmen and part-time criminals Jake and Elwood Blues.  The movie includes performances by popular blues, soul, and R&B performers of the day, such as John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.  A sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, flopped with audiences and critics alike.  [go to page 2 >>]