Raw footage for the TV series Chicago Slices. Buddy Guy's Legends #2, Alvin Martin's Fiat #2.
00:00Copy video clip URL Interview at a blues club with Rosealynn Williams, sister of Lefty Dizz. This night is a benefit tribute to Dizz. Williams shares a fond memory of practicing guitar. She notes Dizz taught her wisdom. He said, “you’ve had it all the time and didn’t know it.” She says the blues world will miss him very much. Right now Lefty’s looking down on us hoping all the guitar players will try to contribute as much as he did.
02:10Copy video clip URL Men on stage auction off a signed photo of Dizz. It sells for thirty dollars.
02:43Copy video clip URL B-roll of crowd attending the tribute party.
02:57Copy video clip URL Interview with Aaron Burton and Tino Cortez who says he played with Dizz for about 6 months. He expressed to him a more traditional blues. Burton says the first blues band he ever played with was one in 1969 featuring Junior Wells and Dizz. When asked what he would say to Dizz if he saw him tonight, Burton replies, knowing Dizz is dead, “Dizz, you’ve done a lot of things in your life, but this is the biggest!” Cortez pays tribute to Dizz when he addresses the camera and says, “Lefty you were the greatest. The only man I know who can make an audience go nuts while you beat the shit out of your guitar.”
05:35Copy video clip URL Interview with Ed Madden who played with Dizz in 1978 at the Checkerboard when Dizz challenged him to a guitar/trumpet duel. Suddenly Mick Jagger appeared on stage and played a few tunes with Dizz.
06:35Copy video clip URL Madden pulls out a small trumpet and plays an improvised tribute to Dizz.
07:37Copy video clip URL B-roll guys play pool. They give testimony to Dizz.
07:55Copy video clip URL Interview with Annie May who reminisces about Dizz. She says she traveled with him on the road. She notes that without Dizz there was no show. He was always fun. She tells a story of he kept the party going all night long.
10:37Copy video clip URL Interview with Dave Myers who says he was friends with Dizz and played together a few times. He notes that Dizz loved to play and entertain and says that people came tonight because they knew and respected Dizz. If he were here tonight, I’d talk to him the way friends talk. He says Dizz knew how to entertain people and how to put on a show, fooling around, jumping up and down. He would hold his guitar up, shake it around, walk through the audience. Everyone admired him for his ability.
14:20Copy video clip URL B-roll, two takes, of the exterior of the club.
15:10Copy video clip URL B-roll of city street.
15:17Copy video clip URL Change of location. The videographer follows Alvin Martin through a dirt lot filled with cars. He comes upon a vandalized car he claims is his. He says it is a Deluxe 1979 Fiat convertible with a deluxe top that can convert to hard top in the winter.
18:09Copy video clip URL Break in video recording. Martin says he bought his Fiat five years ago and tells a story of how he saw it while driving his route one day. He bought the car on the spot. He calls the car Lu-Lu and notes, “we’ve done a lot of great things together. Unfortunately, we have to part.”
19:25Copy video clip URL END
1 Comment
It’s good to see this. I interviewed Ed Madden for the local Blue Island paper in 1978 a week or two after he had found himself jamming with the Rolling Stones at the Lefty Dizz concert he describes in here. I was just a kid, and a rabid Stones fan, and I only found out about the whole thing by listening to friendly small-town office gossip that caused me to pop up out of my cubicle like a prairie dog (“Your friend’s son played with WHO?!”). I still have the tape of that interview. Besides the Stones connection it was just a relief to talk to someone in the town who wasn’t living in an all-white world; I’m from the South Side of Chicago and it was kind of an adjustment working in Blue Island back in the day. The place is a lot more cosmopolitan there now. RIP Lefty Dizz and hello, Ed.