I'd rather drink Muddy Waters

In my day job, I wonder about how services like Youtube can show some of the stuff they do. You know, digital rights and all.

When I get home, I sometimes praise them to high heavens. Today, I stumbled on a huge, huge documentary on Muddy Waters. Because of format constraints on Youtyube, it's split in 7 parts. It starts weird, feels like there's a little missing there, but the whole thing is just amazing, with many, many artists we know and love (Charlie Musselwhite, Willie Smith, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Paul Oscher,...) talking about the man who defined modern blues (in my opinion).

Anyway, the documentary is apparently entitled Playin' for the Devil and here are the links you need :

• Playin' for the Devil part 1
• Playin' for the Devil part 2
• Playin' for the Devil part 3
• Playin' for the Devil part 4
• Playin' for the Devil part 5
• Playin' for the Devil part 6
• Playin' for the Devil part 7

As an added bonus, here's a link to an early film of Got My Mojo Working with, I believe, a young Paul Oscher on harp. Wow !

Comments

[erir fronton]

Yeah,

What's great is that muddy waters and his children will never have a dime on this nor the harmonica players you quoted ... of course you love them but how will they continue to live with people not paying for what's due ?

[Ben Felten]

Eric,

It's a valid comment. However, all I'm doing here is linking an existing resource, legal or not. Either it has been legally uploaded (by the rightowners) in which case there's no wrongdoing, or (more likely) it's been uploaded by someone else. Either way, since Youtube is a free service, no one gets any money out of it except Youtube.

Why don't you take it up with Youtube ? They're the ones allowing the public to view this documentary. Please let me know what they say once you've had a reply from them.

Ben

[eric fronton]

Sure,

We know youtube is just like edonkey and all this stuff it will be sued soon.
Of course you're not doing anythig illegal it's just that you could say guys if you like those videos at youtube that certainly gives no money to our beloved musicians and artists please check out Muddy dvd entitled so and so ...
A better way to promote and help Muddy and his family I guess. We all know most of those great musicians never got the money that was due to them when they were alive ... you're not a major company producer so don't act like one. Help the good guys with good advertisement.

[Ben Felten]

I'm sorry, Eric, but who is "we" ?

Furthermore, if you wish to point me to somewhere legal where people may view said documentary or purchase the DVD, I'm all for it. If this was available on DVD, I'd gladly buy it.

As for whether Youtube will be sued soon or not, you probably know more about it than I do, then. However, accusing me seems a bit hypocritical. I really hope you've sent a good hundred of emails to them first.

Anyway, this is not a place to debate about digital rights. I don't think I'm doing any artists alive or dead any kind of disservice by doing this blog, all albums I mention anywhere have legal purchase links whenever said albums are available, so this'll be the last on that subject.

If you want to discuss this further with me, please do it via e-mail.