Educational Media Reviews Online

Despite this videotape's definitive-sounding title, a blues aficionado may well ask who exactly Mississippi Catfish is. His entry is mysteriously absent from standard blues encyclopedias and other reference sources; web searches generally retrieve recipes or homepages of Cajun restaurants rather than information on a blues performer. Unfortunately, after viewing Mississippi Catfish: Blues Musician, the question still remains unanswered.

In this all-too-brief film, 83-year old singer and harmonica player Mississippi Catfish (whose actual name is never revealed) relates his life story as a son of a poor sharecropper in the Mississippi delta. As a teenager he began singing and playing the blues on weekends, and claims he made recordings with a group, although neither he nor the filmmaker substantiate these claims with names, titles or discographical information. In the early 1940s, on the orders of his wife, he abandoned music for the next 30 years. In 1987 he met and befriended guitarist Paris Simmons, and they began playing blues together in the back of a record shop. Four years later Mississippi Catfish and Paris Simmons were playing publicly. Some footage bears this out, but venues and dates are absent.

Included with footage of the two musicians talking and playing are photographs of rural black life in the delta, taken from the National Archives and the Mississippi Department of Archives. These are intended to illustrate Mississippi Catfish's tales of his life on the delta, and his work on the plantations and highways of Mississippi and Louisiana. If any of the shots are of the subject or his family, such information is again withheld from the viewer.

Such lack of documentation is not the only frustrating factor here. The central purpose of the film remains murky. As a personal memoir of African-American sharecropping life it is acceptable, but adds nothing to what has already been documented on film and in print. As a proof that Mississippi Catfish is "the last of the authentic rural blues singers," as Paris Simmons and the video distributors both claim, it fails outright. The performance footage is brief and poorly edited, usually to a different soundtrack. And, clocking in at under twenty minutes, it seems to end without having had a chance to develop.

Librarians wishing to enhance their blues collections should steer clear of this videotape-- there are other superior materials too numerous to mention here. As for Mississippi Catfish, it is hoped that better documentaries can be made to help get his name into the reference literature.