ROBERT JOHNSON DELTA BLUES KING

Jamie Tovar is a young associate producer with two alluring cinema projects on his plate. He is on song for a biopic on the life of the legendary bluesman, Robert Johnson, entitled, Love In Vain. No photographs of Robert Johnson were known to exist in 1961 when his posthumous album, “King of the Delta Blues Singers” was released. The songs had been recorded in 1936 and 1937.  He had been dead for a generation when he was rediscovered. His reputation grew and his music was heard and imitated by young white musicians.
 
The search for his legend began in 1938 with John Hammond, an important jazz critic and record collector, who served as a role model for Ahmet Ertegun, who started Atlantic Records. Hammond, was descended from the the Vanderbilts, but he was a socialist who loved folk and the blues.  He chanced upon Johnson’s master tapes, transcriptions of his unissued recordings.  Hammond had discovered the purest, most powerful blues singer in the deep south. 
 
Songs with evocative, macabre titles like, “Hellhound on My Trail”, “If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day”, “Me and The Devil Blues”, and “Crossroads” inspired Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, The Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds, and the British Invasion that found Johnson to be the archetypal troubadour of the Delta blues.
 
Hammond introduced Johnson’s unreleased masters to the Harvard-educated Alan Lomax.  Lomax accompanied his father to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where they discovered Huddie Ledbetter, aka Leadbelly.  They secured his release and launched a tour of Harvard and other college campuses.  Lomax was able to locate Robert Johnson’s mother in 1941. He discovered Son House, one of Johnson’s mentors.  Lomax found Johnson’s disciple, McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters, who moved to the south side of Chicago in 1943.  Son House hinted that Robert Johnson had sold his soul to the Devil, the only conceivable explanation for his musical genius.
 
When the Swinging Sixties came into vogue Robert Johnson could at last come into fashion.  Raw and exotic, violent and emotional, it became a key component of the white rocker ethos.  Eric Clapton discovered Johnson when he was sixteen and said, “It was a real shock that there was something that powerful. It all led me to believe here was a guy who really didn’t want to play for people at all, his thing was so unbearable to have to live with that he was almost ashamed. This was an image I was very keen to hang onto.”  
 
Keith Richards was nineteen and Brian Jones was twenty when together with Mick Jagger they discovered Robert Johnson. Richards said, “I’d just met Brian and went to his crash pad. He put on a Robert Johnson record, it was just outstanding stuff. To me he was like a comet or a meteor that came along and BOOM, suddenly he raised the ante and you had to aim that much higher.”
 
In a sense the British Invasion is rooted in the minstrel tradition. In the nineteenth century African Americans rejoiced in a celebration of song and dance indigenous to the minstrel tradition. White composers like Stephen Foster, composed tunes like “Camptown Races”, attributing it as Ethiopian music, contemporary to America. White perfomers smelled money, and soon performed minstrel song and dance in blackface, smeared on with burnt cork.  This tradition continued on through Al Jolson. Little Richard, the iconic architect of rock and roll, performed as a crossdressing R&B shouter in a minstrel review from the deep south with Sugar Bam From Alabam. He had learned this androgynous style from Billy Wright, another cross-dressing black R&B artist of the day.
 
The Stones, Yardbirds, the Blues Breakers, the Kinks, Cream and the Beatles in many ways smeared the burnt cork back on their faces as the invaded the USA, bringin’ the blues back home. Robert Johnson had come full circle. His sighing guitar notes, tempered by winter winds, iron chords and melodies, conjure the image of Satan in all his poetic imagery playing the Devil’s music for the young white bluesmen who became his devotees.  
 
The script for Love In Vain, by Alan Greenberg, attracted the likes of Jagger and Richards, and is acclaimed to be one of the finest examples of this genre.  Star talent currently in discussions to portray Johnson and his contemporaries are, Sean “Puffy” Combs as Johnson, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, and others including Bob Dylan, Prince, Beyonce Knowles, and Queen Latifah.
 
Producers for Love In Vain include the infamous noir director, David Lynch, Jeffery Bowler and Steele Shannon. This much anticipated project is still in development and is expected to be ready for a major theatrical release in Autumn 2012.
 
Gidget was the surfer queen of the halcyon days of 1959, and created such memorable characters as Moondoggie, the Big Kahuna, and Gidget. It starred Sandra Dee and James Darren. It was one of the first great commercial film franchises ever.  The remake of this iconic surf and coming-of-age classic is now in development. In discussions to direct is the grand dame of coming-of-age films, Amy Heckerling. She is famous for such hits as, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, “Clueless” and the “Look Who’s Talking” franchise.
 
Producing Infinite Entertainment Group’s and Columbia Pictures’ Gidget remake is Sidney Ganis. He is known for the marketing and distribution of such mega-franchises as Star Wars and Indiana Jones and served as president of both Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures. Ganis, while president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was responsible for the the change from five Best Picture Oscar nominees to ten.
 
Executive in Charge of Production is New Line Cinema veteran, Deborah Moore. Just a few of her many credits include such successes as The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, and the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Executive Producers are Infinite Entertainment Group founder and CEO, Steele Shannon, and Vintage Studios head, Adam Faletti.
 
Jamie Tovar feels privileged to be associated with these projects about the King of the Delta Blues and the Surfer Queen. These cultural icons are classic Americana, who inspired him as a young hipster to aspire to a career in cinema. Jamie was raised in Thailand, Laos and Indonesia. Jamie often visits old turf in Bangkok. He has gone back to his own roots. He revisited the Madrid Pub in Bangkok’s Patpong entertainment section. It was the watering hole for G.I.s, adventurers, old Asian hands, and CIA field operatives. Its history, like that of the famed Oriental Hotel, is a part of many a novel of old Bangkok. The film scene in Thailand is attracting shoots from all over the world. Jamie Tovar expects to be part of the burgeoning international film production scene here in Bangkok.