Of all the directors who did films in the Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues series, Charles Burnett has the most direct connection to the music. Born in Mississippi in 1944, Burnett grew up listening to the Delta sounds as the came from the radio in his home, and the Chicago innovations of the music as it developed there by Delta artists. On the
Warming by the Devil's Fire collection, Burnett creates an aural montage of the profane and spiritually haunted manifestations inside the music of the Mississippi Delta. These coincide with his cinematic narrative about a young boy who goes to Mississippi to be baptized in the mid-'50s and is exposed -- via a kidnapping by his uncle -- to the rough and rowdy sounds of the "devil's music." Sonically, this is one of the most consistent and satisfying of the series' volumes. From whorehouse anthems such as
Jelly Roll Morton's "Turtle Twist" and
Ma Rainey's "See See Rider," to the hunted, spiritual sickness of
Son House's "Death Letter"; from the bawdy joy of
Mississippi John Hurt's "Big Leg Blues," to the victorious gospel transcendence of
Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Up Above My Head," to the place where both sides of the equation come to break a man apart in
John Lee Hooker's "I'll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive,"
Warming by the Devil's Fire exercises and exorcises demons and spirits with a rolling, pulsing, breathing soundtrack where room is made for all conflicting notions of blues and how they can both liberate and tear a person asunder. ~ Thom Jurek