Two American musicians, two histories, one film. Ben Harper grew up in his grandparents' music shop outside Los Angeles; Charlie Musselwhite came up through Memphis and Chicago alongside Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. John Lee Hooker introduced them. Mavis Staples narrates.
I drew all of it in black ink - Sonny Terry, a South Side handbill, a neon liquor store, a street of bar signs, a desert at dusk. An American label asked a Pole to draw the visual history of American blues, and I had never seen any of it except in photographs. That is the only way I know how to work.
