The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack (2000) is a light but informative documentary made by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot’s daughter, Aiyana. When the young clerk at Roger’s Video had to ask me to repeat the name a third time because he could not understand it to type it into the computer, I said, “Don’t feel bad. He was not a member of Nirvana. He’s an old folk singer from the 60s.” I didn’t add that he was the direct descendant of Woody Guthrie. I didn’t mention that Bob Dylan’s early concert posters claimed “The Son of Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.” The documentary does a wonderful job of retracing this musical life. But the theme of the movie fails. The question is What makes Jack tick? Why is he so hard to know? Why was he never there for his wives or his daughter? Yvor Winters calls the literary problem “the fallacy of imitative form” e.g., writing boringly about boredom. Well, if you ask a non-communicative, mysterious person why he is non-communicative and mysterious, you will probably not get an answer—and we don’t. The pleasant surprise for me was what an infectious singer and astute guitar player Jack was in his prime in the 1960s; the disappointment was how thin and unexpressive his voice has grown in old age. But one thing you know about Jack is that he won’t stop rambling ‘til he dies.
posted on Friday, May 18, 2007 2:05 PM by JimBell