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Volkswagen of America presents
A Vulcan Production
in Association with
Cappa Productions & Jigsaw Productions



Director of Photography Lisa Rinzler
Edited by Bob Eisenhardt and Keith Salmon
Musical Director Steve Jordan
Co-Producer - Richard Hutton
Executive Producer - Martin Scorsese
Executive Producers - Paul G. Allen and Jody Patton
Producer- Jack Gulick
Producer - Margaret Bodde
Produced by Alex Gibney
Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Old or new, mainstream or underground, music is in our veins. Always has been, always will
be. Whether it was a VW Bug on its way to Woodstock or a VW Bus road-tripping to one of
the very first blues festivals. So here's to that spirit of nostalgia, and the soul of the blues.
We're proud to sponsor of LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. Stay tuned. Drivers Wanted.


A Presentation of

Vulcan Productions
The Blues Music Foundation
Dolby Digital
Columbia Records
Legacy Recordings

Soundtrack album available on
Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings/Sony Music Soundtrax
Copyright © 2004 Blues Music Foundation, All Rights Reserved.
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SYNOPSIS

On February 7, 2003, renowned artists across multiple music genres and generations
commandeered the stage at New York Citys Radio City Music Hall to pay tribute to their
common heritage and passion the blues. Shared with thousands of fans in attendance,
legendary performers from roots, rock, jazz and rap joined forces for a once-in-a-lifetime
Salute To The Blues benefit concert whose proceeds went to musical education. Executive
produced by Martin Scorsese, Paul G. Allen and Jody Patton, produced by Alex Gibney and
directed by Antoine Fuqua, LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE captures the nights magic and
weaves a history of the blues through the juxtaposition of performances, backstage interviews,
rehearsals and archival clips of some of the greatest names in American music, from blues
royalty such as Buddy Guy and B.B. King, to their musical heirs ranging from John Fogerty
and Bonnie Raitt to Mos Def and India.Arie.

Made possible in part by the generous sponsorship of Volkswagen, LIGHTNING IN A
BOTTLE follows the story of the week leading up to the concert including rehearsals and
back-stage footage - and the concert itself: a night where the mix of celebration and generosity
among the more than fifty illustrious artists pushed all of their performances to dizzying
heights. The film brings you into the audience, behind the scenes, and, at moments, back in
time. The concert itself takes the viewer on the historical and geographical journey of the
blues, beginning with its roots in Africa, up through the Mississippi Delta into the cities of
Memphis and Chicago in the 1950s and 60s. It follows the music to England and back to the
USA, and ultimately across the world through contemporary rock n roll and hip-hop. At
times, the film looks into the lives of its writers and performers who have endured the pain of
racism and poverty, but all along managed to transform their experiences into a brilliant music.
The blues is endowed with a remarkable ability to connect with universal feelings of desire,
love, loss and bitter disappointment. In the journeys of these artists in this concert, you see the
music for what it truly is: a road map to the human soul.







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WHAT IS THE BLUES?
By Jason Emmons and edited by Robert Santelli,
Blues Historian and Director of Programs for Experience Music Project


In 1903 W. C. Handy, the African American leader of a dance orchestra, got stuck one
night waiting for a train in the hamlet of Tutwiler, Mississippi. With hours to kill and nowhere
else to go, Handy fell asleep at the empty depot on a hard wooden bench. When he woke, a
ragged black man was sitting next to him, singing about goin where the Southern cross the
Dog and sliding a knife against the strings of a guitar. The musician repeated the line three
times and answered it with his guitar.
Intrigued, Handy asked what the line meant. It turned out that the tracks of the Yazoo &
Mississippi Valley Railroad, which locals called the Yellow Dog, crossed the
tracks of the Southern Railroad in the town of Moorehead, where the musician was headed, and
hed put it into a song. It was, Handy later said, the weirdest music I had ever heard.
That strange music was the blues, although few people knew it by that name. At the
turn of the century, the blues was still slowly emerging from the deep South and its roots in
various forms of African American slave songs such as field hollers, work songs, spirituals,
and country string ballads. The blues was rural music that captured the suffering and anguish
of 300 years of slavery and tenant farming, typically played by roaming solo musicians on an
acoustic guitar at weekend parties, picnics and juke joints. Their audience was agricultural
laborers who danced to the propulsive rhythms, moans and slide guitar.
In 1912 Handy helped raise the public profile of the blues when he became one of the
first people to transcribe and publish sheet music for a blues songMemphis Blues. Eight
years later, listeners snapped up more than a million copies of Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith,
the first black female to record a blues vocal. The unexpected success of Smiths recording
alerted record labels to the potential profit of race records, and singers such as Ma Rainey
and Bessie Smith began to introduce the blues to an even wider audience through their
recordings.
As the African Americans that created the blues began to move away from the South,
they changed the music to reflect their new circumstances. Following both World Wars,
thousands of African American farm workers had migrated north to cities like Chicago and
Detroit, and many of them began to view traditional blues as an unwanted reminder of their
humble days toiling in the fields; they wanted to hear music that reflected their new urban
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surroundings. In response, transplanted blues artists such as Muddy Waters, who had lived and
worked on Stovall plantation, just outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, before riding the rails to
Chicago in 1943, swapped acoustic guitars for electric ones and filled out their sound with
drums, harmonica and standup bass. This gave rise to electrified blues with a stirring beat that
drove people onto the dance floor and pointed the way to rhythm and blues and rock n roll.
In the 1940s and early 50s, the electrified blues reached its zenith on the radio, but it
began to falter as listeners turned to the fresh sounds of rock n roll and soul. In the early
1960s, however, it was aspiring white blues musicians in the United Kingdom who helped
resuscitate the blues in America and translated it to a largely white audience. Bands such as the
Rolling Stones performed covers of Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf, and in the process they
created gritty rock n roll that openly displayed its blues influences. They also promoted the
work of their idols, who soon toured England to wide acclaim and then brought the blues back
to the U.S. While they were happy to be in demand again as performers, many veteran blues
musicians were bitterly disappointed that artists such as Led Zeppelin, who had copped much
of their sound and guitar licks from African American blues artists, were getting rich while the
older musicians struggled to survive.
Today, 100 years after W. C. Handy first heard it, the blues has profoundly influenced
virtually all genres of music in ways Handy never imagined the weirdest music hed ever
heard could have. To many young listeners, traditional bluesif not contemporary bluesmay
sound as strange as it did to Handy. But if they listen closely, what theyre hearing are the
same sounds that influenced nearly all music genres, including hip-hop, rock and soul. Theyre
the sounds of a rich, powerful history of people who helped build America and created one of
the most influential musical forms in popular music.

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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION


The blues: there is perhaps no other genre of music in American culture with such a
rich, complex history as this legacy; one that has influenced musical traditions and artists all
around the world. Born of poverty and slavery, the blues ultimately embraced diverse folk
traditions from diverse nations and peoples, and has in turn come to represent an entire genre
of distinctive musical expression. Aficionados describe Delta blues, Chicago blues, Memphis
blues, West Coast blues, Country blues, Texas blues a universe of musical styles that weave
the fabric of the rich musical tapestry that is the blues.

For a single night last year, the living legends of the blues from original Mississippi
Delta guitarist Honeyboy Edwards to legend Buddy Guy, from octogenarian B.B. King to
Shemekia Copeland who recorded her debut when she was just 18 gathered at New Yorks
Radio City Music Hall for a once-in-a-lifetime concert, An All-Star Salute to the Blues. The
result, directed by filmmaker Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and produced by Martin
Scorsese (Raging Bull, The Last Waltz), is LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE, one of the most
dynamic, moving and entertaining concert movies ever made.
More than merely concert footage, LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE is a visual and sonic
memoir of the American blues tradition, a story of suffering, determination, skill and triumph
flavored w