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FILM AND MUSIC
‘I Got A Right To Sing (Write) the Blues,’ America
The film, ‘Sinners’, once again reminds us how music makes sense of our lives
Ryan Coogler, the creative voice behind the highly successful Hollywood film, Sinners, says that it was the song, ‘Wang, Dang Doodle’ which triggered him to make this film. We are all the better.
‘Wang Dang Doodle’ is a song about coping in difficult times. It is about a party, a fish fry, where the people will party all night long. All the bad guys are called forth to the party, and whatever you have going on, just come to the party.
The legendary blues singer, Howlin’ Wolf, reluctantly recorded the song in 1960 after Willie Dixon wrote it. It was an instant classic even though the song was marinating at the time. In 1966, Dixon re-worked his song and gave it to Kok Ko Taylor, the Queen of the Blues. Taylor’s version shot to the top of the charts and changed her career forever. If she performed, she had to sing this amazing blues song about how a fish fry party in the Black world of America could heal emotional and mental wounds for people treated unkindly by their own country and many people of that country.
Eventually, more and more artists, Blues artists or not, recorded versions of Wang Dang Doodle…
