Rural Alabama
Tyrone "Pine Top" Purvis (Danny Glover) owns the Honeydripper Lounge, a roadhouse just outside the town of Harmony, and operates it with the help of his best old friend Maceo (Charles S. Dutton). Purvis is dedicated to acoustic blues and his regularly featured singer is the venerable old Bertha Mae Spivey (Dr. Mable John).
But the folks from town and the nearby Army base plus the itinerate cottonpickers don't want that old style music. Instead they flock to the roadhouse across the way where the jukebox rules.
Purvis, in debt to his landlord, the liquor supplier, and the chicken supplier, feels he has one last chance to make his lounge viable again and books the electric guitar player Guitar Sam. Purvis spends the week making arrangements and promoting the gig but when Saturday arrives and Purvis goes to the train station to pick up Guitar Sam, he finds that ol' Sam hasn't been released from prison yet.
Purvis has no choice but to take a big chance on Sonny (Gary Clark, Jr.), a very young man with a homemade electric guitar who has just wandered into town and is quitely flirting with Purvis' beautiful daughter China Doll (YaYa DeCosta).
There are several substories running in this film, too, and all are interesting and well done. And the music is just generally fabulous!
Others who appear in the film include:
Lisa Gay Hamilton as Purvis' wife Delilah; Stacy Keach as Sheriff Pugh; Vondie Curtis-Hall as Miss Bertha Mae's younger companion/lover; Mary Steenbergen the lonely woman who employs Delilah as a domestic; Keb' Mo' as the ethereal Possum; Sean Patrick Thomas as Dex, Eric Abrams as Ham, and Kel Mitchell as Junebug, bickering cottonpickers; and a host of fabulous old blues musicians.
Written and directed by John Sayles.
The DVD's bonus material and director's voice-over are well worth the investment of time, in my opinion.
Rated PG-13 for brief violence and some suggestive material.
My personal rating: B+
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