2005 Fiction

soot and spit

Mee, Charles L.

The world of James Castle, who made art not to get rich, not to get famous, not to be cool, but because he needed to. We see his drawings projected on the walls of the ice house that his family gave him as a place to work. Full of songs and dances, the music of John Hartford, the shape note songs of the the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, songs by Blind Lemon Jefferson, by the Memphis jug band, in which one of the members played an empty whiskey bottle, by the blind Louisiana guitarist Didier Hebert, by Cannon's Jug Stompers (led by Gus Cannon, whose parents were born into slavery, and whose first banjo was made from a bread-pan and a raccoon skin head). [9 actors and a chorus of a half-dozen performers with Down Syndrome]