Charles Burnett explores his own past as a young boy who was shuttled back and forth between Los Angeles and Mississippi, and who was musically torn between a mother who loved the blues and a grandmother who believed that the blues was the devil's music.

Charles Burnett explores his own past as a young boy who was shuttled back and forth between Los Angeles and Mississippi, and who was musically torn between a mother who loved the blues and a grandmother who believed that the blues was the devil's music. Burnett's film boldly mixes fictional storytelling with documentary footage in a tale about a young boy's encounter with his family in Mississippi in 1955, and tensions between the heavenly strains of gospel and the devilish moans of the blues.

Says Burnett, "The sound of the blues was a part of my environment that I took for granted. However, as years passed, the blues slowly emerged as an essential source of imagery, humor, irony and insight that allows one to reflect on the human condition. I always wanted to do a story on the blues that not only reflected its nature and its content but also alludes to the form itself. In short, a story that gives you the impression of the blues."

Film Credits
Written and Directed by: Charles Burnett
Produced by: Margaret Bodde, Alex Gibney
Narrated by: Carl Lumbly
Starring: Tommy Hicks, Nathaniel Lee Jr.
Co-Producers: Wesley Jones, Mikaela Beardsley
Line Producer: Daphne McWilliams
Original Score by: Stephen James Taylor
Director of Photography: John N. Demps
Edited by: Edwin Santiago
Production Designer: Liba Daniels
Archival Performances: Son House, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mississippi John Hurt, Victoria Spivey, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Ida Cox, Mamie Smith, Lightnin'Hopkins, Reverend Gary Davis, Big Bill Broonzy, W.C. Handy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Bessie Smith