Re: Mandolins in the Movies
Regarding Winter's Bone, I too enjoy the music in the show very much. Debra Granik, the director, works local culture into her films. In this case, she discovered while making the film that music sessions in homes were common entertainments in that part of Missouri, so she worked one into Winter's Bone. However, the movie was made in 2010, while Almeda Riddle was a traditional singer who died in 1986. The person in the movie was Marideth Sisco, a local singer with "a radio program/ podcast on Ozarks folklore (sic)" (from CD liner notes). Sisco also connected Granik with other local musicians seen in the movie. On the soundtrack CD, Marideth sings "Fair and Tender Ladies," a traditional song, with Blackberry Winter, a band who's mandolin player is Bo Brown. I don't think he's the mandolin player in the movie's party scene (different weight, hair and beard length from the the video below, a year or two later). The soundtrack is very good for those who like old time music and really raw country (and it spares us the Death Metal number in the young couple's bungalow). I'm not sure how Almeda Riddle got into your mind, Bill. Perhaps it was because Marideth sings another song, "High on A Mountain," written by a younger Carolina contemporary of Riddle, Ola Belle Reed. By the way, Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence before we'd heard of her, is an excellent movie, but very dark, at the far end of the scale from rom-coms. (For the symbolic thinkers among us, it has shades of the folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm.)
The party scene isn't available online, but here's Marideth Cisco singing "Fair and Tender Ladies" with Blackberry Winter, featuring Bo Brown on mandolin:
Last edited by Ranald; Apr-19-2022 at 2:42pm.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
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