Mr. James, do you think I'll ever be able to play the guitar the way you do?' And Skip James turns to him and he says, 'Son, Skip has been and gone from places you will never get to' - Greil Marcus, account of a conversation with a young acolyte in Skip's dressing room
Hi Bruce: Thanks for putting this up. It's great. From what I can gather, the original was part of a program that aired on PBS in 1981 with the title, "The Uncle Dave Macon Program." Was the program ever made available to the general public in VHS or DVD format? If not, does Blaine have any plans to make it available in the future, because I'd surely love to watch it--and I bet that I'm not the only one.
Hi Stuart, Blaine has been busy restoring the camera-original videotapes of his work (as well as that of others). He has restored and digitized the UDM documentary as well as the posted Kirk interview which wasn't included in the finished PBS show (time constraints). I've e-mailed him about your query and will post his reply when I get one.
No commercial copies have been available in the 30 years (yikes!) since broadcast. John Hartford told me it was his favorite music doc of all time; he had a VHS copy he'd taped off the TV broadcast.
I talked with Blaine and he has no plans to commercially issue the Uncle Dave movie. He has followed the discussion here and is impressed, I think, with the high level of Weeniedom.
He seems willing to burn a few DVDs for interested folks. though I expect he'll need to cover his time and costs. But that's between you all. He's permitted me to post his e-mail. Blaine Dunlap: nolavid@gmail.com
And while we're on the subject of Uncle Dave, the Rutherford County Historical Society published a dandy biography (by Charles Wolfe). If you can't afford the Bear Family box set, which has Charles' writings included, this book at $5 (+ $3 postage) is great. Go to the website and scroll down to item #35.
What an amazing little interview excerpt! I am loving this! Just sent an email to Blaine, glad to hear that he is willing to make the full documentary available.
The Uncle Dave doc has turned up on Folkstreams.net. Just finished watching, it's great. Aside from the wonderful music and interviews, the humour the filmmakers bring to it is charming. Something you don't see much in contemporary music documentaries. It also has more footage from the Grand Ole Opry flick I hadn't seen - Uncle Dave the movie star.
Glad this is available for people to see! UB, the Grand Ole Opry movie is included on DVD with the Bear Family Uncle Dave set. There's not nearly enough Uncle Dave in the movie, but he steals every scene he's in. The studio would have done a lot better to jettison the movie "hillbillies" and just make a movie around him. Chris