Hoping to begin production with funding from a PledgeMusic campaign, Born in Chicago is a documentary that accounts the renovation and vital development of the blues that took place between the 1950s and 1960s. The late B.B. King, Jack White and Bob Dylan each boast musical scores featured in the latest blues film.
The John Anderson-directed doc kicked off a PledgeMusic campaign hoping to procure enough funds to secure rights for archival as well as musical footage necessary for the documentary. Anderson also helmed the Brian Wilson concert film, Smile. Born in Chicago is nearing its final completion and has already been screen at the Chicago Blues festival, South by Southwest and Lincoln Center.
The campaign will remain active and eager for donors up until Sept. 16. In exchange for monetary support, the documentary offers eclectic choices of clothing, copies of the film, and a box set collection available as a double vinyl LP among other formats, notes Rolling Stone. All of which detail the historical meaning behind Chicago blues and the music it went on to encourage.
Supporters are also eligible to win a chance to Skype with keyboardist Barry Goldberg for a price of $300, while $150 gets you tickets to the movies official premier and after party. For a steep price of $2,500, backers can acquire guitars signed by Rick Reed and Elvis Presley.
Born in Chicago offers performances and interviews from the iconic Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Charlie Musselwhite, Steve Miller, Hubert Sumlin and Sam Lay. Marshall Chess of Chess Records narrates the documentary that focuses on musicians such as Nick Gravenits, Goldeberg, Harvey Mandel and Corky Siegel — each of whom began their careers as rock and roll innovators and ended up in Chicago to learn the blues from the best of the best.
"In the mid-Fifties and early Sixties, we heard this really unbelievable music coming from our little radios, in our bedrooms, in our comfortable neighborhoods on the North Side and South Side, Hyde Park, and the suburbs of Chicago," Goldberg remembers in the PledgeMusic campaign trailer. "And we wanted to learn first-hand where this music was coming from — and it was in our own backyard."
King, White and Dylan are the most suitably picked musicians to feature in the film as all three have made a unique and indelible mark on the history of music. King's discography will continue to live on in through the endless musicains he inspired over his career while Jack White recently recieved a star on the Nashville Music City Walk of Fame and a Bob Dylan Super Bowl ad even conjured an entire LP out of The X-Files star David Duchovny.
