......at the Tinseltown Multiplex in Pflugerville and really enjoyed it.
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It's the partly fictionalized, using some dramatic license, story of how Leonard Chess started and ran Chess Records on the south side of Chicago, making Blues, R&B and R&R records with Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry and Etta James.
At the end of the movie, some additional facts were scrolled on the screen, including that all these people are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I bought their records in the 50s and 60s and a satisfying number of those hit songs are featured in the movie.
I even already knew the real names of these folks, before they took stage names, so I was certainly in the targeted audience for this flick.
The music is very well done by the performers who portray the original recording artists; I'm very familiar those classic records and I was quite pleased and not disappointed at all when those songs were played and sung anew.
From what I've learned as a copycat musician and avid fan, for fully five decades, about these seminal artists, their chops and their personalities, there's a lot of accuracy in this movie.
There are some big omissions that I noticed in this story
Leonard Chess created Chess Records with his brother Phil, who's not even mentioned, and some other Chess recording artists such as Bo Diddley are left out too.
And there was one interesting bombshell of information detonated that I had never heard of before: Etta James is apparently the daughter of a famous pool hustler whose real name was Rudolph Wanderone.
I already knew that the real Etta James has been, at times in her life, a very hefty lady (built for comfort, not for speed), who underwent gastric bypass surgery to conquer obesity, but I had never realized her daddy was best known as Minnesota Fats.
No kidding.
I thought Beyonce did a good job portraying Etta, even putting on some noticeable weight for the role.
I think there could be some awards nominations for some of this movie's makers and stars.
When my family vacationed in Chicago, we went to the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, Wrigley Field and Soldier Field.
But we also, just to please me, drove by Chess Records at 2120 South Michigan Avenue.
I've also visited Norman Petty's studio, where Buddy Holly & The Crickets recorded in Clovis, NM.
And I've been to the Stax Recording Studio on McLemore Avenue and the Sun Studio, both in Memphis, TN.
I'd like to visit Berry Gordy's MoTown Studio in Detroit, MI and some other places where the music I love was created.
I don't suggest that most fans of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Johnny Cash and The Supremes need to make these musical pilgrimages, but if you like the recording artists I've mentioned and enjoyed movies like "Ray," "I Walk the Line," "Dreamgirls" and "The Buddy Holly Story," I think you'd enjoy going to a theater to see or renting "Cadillac Records."
You'll save a lot of travel time and gas and some of you might appreciate this excellent reminiscence of this music and those times nearly as much as I did.
My wife and daughter liked the movie also.
And I'd also mention that checking out some other videos, these are documentaries not dramatizations, which might be worthwhile for some folks.
"Standing in the Shadows of MoTown" and "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music" come to mind.
The Link
The Link
The Link
It's the partly fictionalized, using some dramatic license, story of how Leonard Chess started and ran Chess Records on the south side of Chicago, making Blues, R&B and R&R records with Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry and Etta James.
At the end of the movie, some additional facts were scrolled on the screen, including that all these people are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I bought their records in the 50s and 60s and a satisfying number of those hit songs are featured in the movie.
I even already knew the real names of these folks, before they took stage names, so I was certainly in the targeted audience for this flick.
The music is very well done by the performers who portray the original recording artists; I'm very familiar those classic records and I was quite pleased and not disappointed at all when those songs were played and sung anew.
From what I've learned as a copycat musician and avid fan, for fully five decades, about these seminal artists, their chops and their personalities, there's a lot of accuracy in this movie.
There are some big omissions that I noticed in this story
Leonard Chess created Chess Records with his brother Phil, who's not even mentioned, and some other Chess recording artists such as Bo Diddley are left out too.
And there was one interesting bombshell of information detonated that I had never heard of before: Etta James is apparently the daughter of a famous pool hustler whose real name was Rudolph Wanderone.
I already knew that the real Etta James has been, at times in her life, a very hefty lady (built for comfort, not for speed), who underwent gastric bypass surgery to conquer obesity, but I had never realized her daddy was best known as Minnesota Fats.
No kidding.
I thought Beyonce did a good job portraying Etta, even putting on some noticeable weight for the role.
I think there could be some awards nominations for some of this movie's makers and stars.
When my family vacationed in Chicago, we went to the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, Wrigley Field and Soldier Field.
But we also, just to please me, drove by Chess Records at 2120 South Michigan Avenue.
I've also visited Norman Petty's studio, where Buddy Holly & The Crickets recorded in Clovis, NM.
And I've been to the Stax Recording Studio on McLemore Avenue and the Sun Studio, both in Memphis, TN.
I'd like to visit Berry Gordy's MoTown Studio in Detroit, MI and some other places where the music I love was created.
I don't suggest that most fans of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Johnny Cash and The Supremes need to make these musical pilgrimages, but if you like the recording artists I've mentioned and enjoyed movies like "Ray," "I Walk the Line," "Dreamgirls" and "The Buddy Holly Story," I think you'd enjoy going to a theater to see or renting "Cadillac Records."
You'll save a lot of travel time and gas and some of you might appreciate this excellent reminiscence of this music and those times nearly as much as I did.
My wife and daughter liked the movie also.
And I'd also mention that checking out some other videos, these are documentaries not dramatizations, which might be worthwhile for some folks.
"Standing in the Shadows of MoTown" and "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music" come to mind.
The Link
The Link
