MOVIE: Twenty Feet From Stardom

Twenty Feet From Stardom: a musical delight.   If you enjoy the music of the 60’s and 70’s, you are going to love this movie documentary.  Over the opening titles, Lou Reed is singing the stanza from “Walk on the Wild Side” of “and the colored girls sing/doo, da-doo, da-doo, doo, doo …”, which serves as the launching pad for this story of the backup singers on some of my favorite songs.  Most of the backup singers are African-American woman.  The movie intertwines the music with interviews of the singers and clips from early performance days.  At various points in the film you see Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Bette Midler and Mick Jagger talking about the importance of the backup singers.  The smile that comes across Jagger’s face as “Gimme Shelter” plays in the background is joyful and later in the film, there is a brief live performance.   Merry Clayton tells the story of how she became the female voice in “Gimme Shelter”.  While I’m still not a David Bowie fan, I have new respect for his “Young Americans”.  The movie is directed by Morgan Neville, who has carved out a documentary film career with stories about Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters and Stax Records.  I love Neville’s music selections.  I gained new information while being entertained; for instance, I knew White singers had covered R/B songs but I didn’t realize that Black groups such as the Crystals  were actually lip singing to records made by other Black singers.  The 90 minute film keeps you entertained (how can you not be with segments that include Ray Charles’ Raelettes and the Ike and Tina Turner Review).  My only criticism of the film is that for brief periods, I wasn’t sure which artist we were focusing on due to the shifting back and forth among the singers while weaving between the past and the present.  The film provides new information as to the nastiness of Phil Spector but, fortunately, scenes involving Spector are kept to a minimum.  The power of some of the voices to this day are magnificent.  Apparently, Darlene Love is the only backup singer to have been inducted into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”, however, artists like Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer are highlighted.  There is a remarkable scene with Sting and Fischer.  There are also the Wright Family members who, I learned, produced some of the bird sounds in Aviator.  Clayton is the best storyteller of the group and, as noted above, her tale about the late hour call to join Jagger in the studio or to sing “Sweet Home Alabama” are particular highlights.  The film is not entirely historic.  There is a segment on Judith Hill and her current dilemma of having to decide whether to continue being employed as a backup singer or refusing backup gigs so she can focus on crossing the 20 feet to be a star.  The movie is quite a delight.  And if you haven’t seen any of Neville’s other works, you are missing out.