Sayles self-finances labor of love flick about birth of rock 'n' roll

Hope there's a place in your heart for a sweet little music-oriented movie called "The Honeydripper."

Noted director/screenwriter John Sayles is the driving wheel behind this fanciful period piece, imagining that moment of cultural transition in the rural South when the blues went electric and a long repressed African-American populace had something thrilling to celebrate.

Aptly timed for release in Black History Month, and already nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, the saga is set in the tiny, crossroads, cotton-picking town of Harmony, Ala., circa 1950, where a boogie-woogie piano player and tavern owner named Tyrone "Pine Top" Purvis (Danny Glover) is looking for a way to lure folks back to his failing club. The old-timey blues singer Bertha Mae Spivey (Dr. Mabel John) ain't drawing them in anymore. But if only he could get the famous Guitar Sam to come in for a show. And if that won't work, maybe this young, instrument-toting drop-in from nowhere Sonny Blake (Gary Clark Jr.) could pretend to be Guitar Sam, if only for a night.

The saga comes to life surely in the hands of an empathetic cast, with vivid photography and a vital mixed bag of tunes performed by the likes of Ms. John (former director of Ray Charles' Raylettes and sister of Little Willie John), Keb' Mo' (as a blind seer) and newcomer Clark, with a jumping little band.

The other day, Sayles came by to jaw about his self-financed/self-distributed labor of love. ("I had to write a lot of film scripts for hire - including 'Jurassic Park 4' - to pay for this one" he confided. "And we're now releasing it ourselves, city by city, because studios have sworn off period films.")

Also along for the visit was Sayles' longtime producer Maggie Renzi (their other collaborations include "The Return of the Secaucus Seven," "The Brother from Another Planet," "Matewan," "City of Hope," "Passion Fish" and "Sunshine State") and the film's cute-as-her-name(s) ingenue Yaya DeCosta, who plays the fragile but determined China Doll.

Q: John, in a way, you're defining a period of technical transition in this film as much as a cultural one, aren't you?

Sayles: The music had to change. That old blues harmonica wail is the sound of the train, and by the 1950s people were traveling in their "Rocket 88" cars. It was a faster world, a noisier world and the music had to get faster and noisier. And I think it was doing that with boogie-woogie piano and honking saxophone, and then all of a sudden the poor guitar player who was in the back, struggling to be heard, he got this new weapon, which was this solid-bodied guitar and amplifier.

Renzi: And electricity, which was just as important.

Sayles: That little town in Alabama would only have had electricity for about five years. Rural areas were still getting it in the '50s. I used to go down there as a kid to visit relatives and there'd be a big Western Electric sign on the door of a place if they had electricity - and maybe air conditioning.

Q: There are lots of references that show your appreciation of blues history - from the opening shot of a kid playing on a single-string instrument he made from wire.

Wasn't that done in real life by Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters?

Sayles: That's an African-rooted instrument called the Diddley Bow. Bo took his name from that. And there were lots of guys who made their first guitar from a cigar box.

Renzi: Like Danny's character says in the movie, they played mud if they had to.

Q: How about the character of Bertha Mae Spivey. Were you thinking about Victoria Spivey, one of the earliest blues recording stars?

Sayles: Actually, that character is based on the Ma Rainey/Bessie Smith era. There were those blues shouters and they had about a 10-year reign. And this is 20 years later. She's retired and the only thing she cares about is performing, even though only five or 10 people will come to see her.

A lot of the movie came from this legend of a guy named Guitar Slim who had a big hit in the early '50s with "This Thing I Used to Do." These were the days before rock videos or albums with cover photos, so unless you were in the New Orleans area you didn't know what he looked like. So all these club proprietors in the South who couldn't book him would say, "Hey you, guitar player, can you play that song? You're Guitar Slim tonight." And as far as the people were concerned, he was. The celebrity thing hadn't taken over yet. If a guy could play, that was good enough. People just wanted to dance.

Q: So is your premise that rock and roll was born at this crossroad?

Sayles: Over and over again. For the soundtrack [coming out on Rhino CD] I did some research to what was playing on jukeboxes in those days. I actually found a playlist in Clarksdale, Miss., which is kind of the birthplace of the blues. It had gospel and rhythm and blues. Swing was still on the jukebox, too, along with Perry Como, slide-guitar blues and country and western. In the film we have Hank Williams singing "Move It On Over, " a rockabilly hit from 1948 which sounds a lot like "Rock Around the Clock." The old rhythm and blues wasn't called rock and roll but was very close to it, and came from all those places, all those influences.

From about 1920 on, there was radio, and all the rhythm and blues players talk in their autobiographies about listening to the Grand Ole Opry while the country white guys were listening to the King Biscuit Flour Hour with [bluesman] Sonny Boy Williamson.

So rock and roll isn't really this straight progression. It evolves out of a bunch of things and you only had to add on a couple things, like the rock drummer doing a backbeat and the electric guitar, for the DJs to say, "Hey, this sounds new."

Q: Yaya, you're just 25. How does this movie resonate with you and your friends - including its illuminations of racism and segregated society?

DeCosta: It's subtle, but so important. I'm from New York and I'd never been to the South before. But standing in the cotton fields, I couldn't help but think about stories I'd heard. My father was a SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] member. Now I have some of that Alabama cotton in a vase in my little New York apartment and it's a constant reminder of the history which is so easy to forget nowadays. And my friends who've seen the film feel the same way.

They have really been drawn in by what it has to say. *