February 7, 2003, executive producer Martin Scorsese took to the stage at the Radio City Music Hall and introduced Salute to The Blues, a live concert in which the history of the blues would be told. The show, produced in chronological order with the help of slides, photographs and archival footage, brought to the arena everyone from Ruth Brown singing slave songs to Bonnie Raitt and Steve Tyler demonstrating the width and breadth of the genre's contribution to American culture.
Many of the performances are astounding, but Scorsese and director Antoine Fuqua (Tears of The Sun, Training Day) cast such a wide net, it all becomes a bit much after a while, turning a loving homage to a dying art into a particularly good episode of American Idol. We get glimpses of some rivalries, idolations and plain old anger, but nothing that would flesh out the musicians into individuals. It's plain that many of these artists never got their dues when their careers were at their height, but the reasons for those failures are never explored, nor are the reasons behind the blues' fall and rap's ascendancy as the black musical form examined.