8 Things About Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight”

The Hateful Eight (2015), billed as the eighth film from Quentin Tarantino, is a Western set in the post-Civil War years on the American frontier. The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and others. Ennio Morricone, who wrote great music for many of the classic spaghetti Westerns, provides the musical score for The Hateful Eight (although the song that Jennifer Jason Leigh sings is an old Australian folk song).

Whether or not you like the three-hour film may largely depend on how you feel about the violence and other aspects of Tarantino’s films. While most regard Pulp Fiction (1994) as a masterpiece (and I agree), his movies since Jackie Brown (1997) have delved into brutal areas that divide viewers. So, instead of a regular review, below are “8 Things About The Hateful Eight.”

1. Tarantino remains a master at building tension by featuring conversations inevitably leading up to an explosion of violence.

Tarantino Western 2. I liked Tarantino’s decision about showing the movie in Ultra Panavision 70mm. I like the format for films, although because the movie was a Western I expected more outdoor shots. Instead it was set largely indoors (“four-fifths” of the film, by one count), arguably somewhat wasting the beauty of the format.

3. But the indoor setting highlighted similarities between the approach of The Hateful Eight to Tarantino’s classic Reservoir Dogs (1992), focusing on the interactions between characters with flashbacks to solve mysteries.

4. Depending on your point of view, The Hateful Eight comments on America’s brutality, racism, and misogyny both today and in the post-Civil War frontier. Or Tarantino unnecessarily overuses the n-word and imposes violence against a woman as a sort of running joke. Or maybe it is a little of both, but the film certainly goes over the top at points.

5. Some folks loved the movie. The Guardian headlines “Tarantino triumphs with a western of wonder.” There is some talk of a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 75% Critics rating and a 79% Audience rating.

6. Some folks hated the movie, arguing that the movie is not about big American themes but instead is just a bunch of talk as an excuse to lead to violent killings. Matt Zoller Seitz on RogerEbert.com concludes that “there’s no detectable moral framework to speak of.” Similarly, The Atlantic calls it a “Gory Epic in Search of Meaning.” In an insightful conclusion, Seitz raises an interesting question about Tarantino: “It’s hard to shake the suspicion that, deep down, he believes in nothing but sensation, and that he’s spent the last decade or so stridently identifying with oppressed groups so that he can get a gold star for making the kinds of films he’d be making anyway.”

7. Samuel L. Jackson is a great actor who should have won an Academy Award by now.

8. The movie kept me entertained and some of it was brilliant, but some of the language and violence were unnecessarily distracting. One killing near the end was ridiculous and overly cruel, although the final scene was great. After watching the film, I felt like I needed to do something to wash my brain of all the nastiness. I went home and watched an Anthony Mann Western.

What did you think of “The Hateful Eight”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    What Song Did Jennifer Jason Leigh Sing in “The Hateful Eight”?

    Jennifer Jason Leigh Jim Jones Song In one of the rare touching moments in Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015), the captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up a guitar and sings a song about a prisoner on a ship. Although Domergue eventually adds a few lines of her own about getting revenge upon her captor John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and escaping to Mexico, the song itself is a traditional Australian folk song called “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” or sometimes simply “Jim Jones.”

    “Jim Jones at Botany Bay”

    The song refers to the first Australian penal colony, Botany Bay, where England sent convicts beginning in 1788. Star Trek fans may recognize the name because the ship that carried Khan Noonien Singh and his comrades was named the S.S. Botany Bay after the penal colony.

    In “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” the singer Jim Jones is an English convict who has been sentenced to ride the ship to the penal colony, although the judge first threatened to hang him. On the trip, the men on the ship repel a group of pirates, but Jones thinks, “I’d rather joined that pirate ship than come to New South Wales.”

    Jones dreams of escaping and joining “the bold bushrangers there Jack Donahue and Company.”

    And some dark night when everything is silent in this town,
    I’ll kill the tyrants one by one and shoot the floggers down;
    I’ll give the law a little shock, remember what I say;
    They’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

    The song was first published in 1907, although The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that scholars speculate that the song was written around 1830 because of the reference to the bushranger Jack Donahue (sometimes spelled “John Donohoe”). Donahue was an Irishman sentenced to Australia in 1825. But he later escaped, forming gangs that stole from wealthy land owners. He eventually was killed in a shootout in New South Wales.

    So, the song would have been around during the years after the Civil War, which is the setting for The Hateful Eight. And it might not be unusual for someone like Daisy Domergue to be fond of a ballad about another outlaw.

    Versions of the Song

    “Jim Jones at Botany Bay” has been performed and recorded by a number of singers. Bob Dylan recorded “Jim Jones” for his Good As I Been To You (1992) album. You may hear a clip of Bob Dylan’s version on his website.

    The video below features Old Crow Medicine Show performing the song at Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2010. Check it out.

    For a complete recording of “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” below is a version by Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston.

    In modern decades, the song has been used as a song of defiance as it was in The Hateful Eight. For example, English folksinger A.L. “Bert” Lloyd sang ““Jim Jones at Botany Bay”” at London’s Westminster Hall during a rally in support of releasing political activist Angela Davis in the 1970s. So, whenever you are feeling a bit rebellious, crank up “Jim Jones at Botany Bay.”

    And that is the Story Behind the Song.

    Photo via YouTube. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Elizabeth Cotten: “Freight Train”

    Cotten Freight Train Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten was born on January 5, 1895 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, although some sources list the year of her birth as 1893. Cotten began playing the banjo at the age of eight and soon thereafter turned to the guitar and at the age of twelve wrote “Freight Train,” a timeless folk song that would eventually stand beside other classics in the canon of great train songs.

    Early Life, Discovery, and “Freight Train”

    As a young woman, Cotten put aside any hopes of being a musician for marriage, motherhood, and work. But after a divorce in 1940 led her to Washington, D.C., Cotten’s work in a department store led her to be discovered by the world, according to Nigel Williamson’s The Rough Guide to the Blues.

    While working in Landsburgh’s Department Store around the mid-1940s, Cotten found a lost girl and helped reunite the girl with her mother. The mother turned out to be Ruth Crawford Seeger, and the little girl was Peggy Seeger, who was the sister of Pete Seeger. The chance encounter led Cotten to working in the Seeger household, where the family’s interest in music rekindled Cotten’s own musical talents.

    Eventually, Peggy’s brother Mike Seeger produced Cotten and her unique finger-picking guitar playing for an album with Folkways, Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar (1958). The album included the song about death that Cotten wrote as a 12-year-old, “Freight Train”: “When I die, oh bury me deep / Down at the end of old Chestnut Street, / So I can hear old Number Nine / As she comes rolling by.”

    Music Career

    Audiences came to love Cotten’s performances at folk festivals, where she would tell stories about her life and perform songs with her distinctive guitar playing. As her friend and musician Dana Klipp would later explain, “It wasn’t just her music; it was her entire personality and her spirituality. It was a very gentle and graceful spirituality.”

    Still, she kept her day job of doing domestic work until 1970. She made additional recordings, and the album Elizabeth Cotton, Live won a Grammy award in 1984 when Cotten was 89.

    Later Life and Death

    Cotten spent the last years of her life in Syracuse, New York, which in 1983 named a small park “The Elizabeth Cotten Grove” in her honor. But Cotten still continued to perform in her later years. Cotten’s last performances occurred at the 1986 Philidelphia Folk Festival and at a New York City performance arranged for her by Odetta in 1987.

    Cotten passed away on June 29, 1987, and although in “Freight Train” she asked to be buried “Down at the end of old Chestnut Street,” her body was cremated.

    Cotton’s music and spirit, however, live on. Cotten left behind a lot of fans, while others are still discovering her today. Below is one of her late interviews, when she was interviewed by Aly Bain for his 1985 series Down Home.

    Cotten’s songs have been covered by many performers, including Jerry Garcia and Peter, Paul and Mary. Another of her many honors is that she was included in Brian Lanker’s book I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America.

    What is your favorite performance by Elizabeth Cotten? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Spotlight On the Four Magnificent Artists Behind “Sweet Soul Music”

    Sweet Soul Music
    Arthur Conley

    Singer-songwriter Arthur Conley was born in Georgia on January 4, 1946 and died of cancer on November 17, 2003.  Conley is best known for his singing of the wonderful song “Sweet Soul Music.”

    Conley helped create the classic recording with Otis Redding, but the song’s creation comes from a history of digressions.  Similarly, Conley’s life had its own digressions.

    The Singer and Co-Writer

    Arthur Conley started off his career as the lead singer of Arthur & the Corvets in 1959, recording three singles with the group in the early 1960s. But he went on his own and eventually had his biggest hit with “Sweet Soul Music” in 1967.

    Conley had hit singles in the U.S. through the early 1970s, with some ups and downs in the music industry. In 1975, he moved to Europe, eventually settling in the Netherlands and changing his name, using his middle name and his mother’s maiden name, to Lee Charles.

    After his relocation, Conley became a successful entrepreneur and continued to work in the music industry and promote other bands. His moves likely were prompted by discrimination he faced for being gay, and he died in relative obscurity in a small village near the German border.

    Still, most people remember him for the great joy he brings to his recording of “Sweet Soul Music.”



    The Co-Writer Otis Redding

    Conley had some help in writing “Sweet Soul Music.” The great Otis Redding, after hearing Conley’s earlier music, asked Conley to record on his label and the two men later worked on writing “Sweet Soul Music” together.

    Conley admired Redding, who mentored Conley in the music business. While name-dropping the great soul singers in the song, Conley insisted they include Redding’s name.

    Redding died tragically in 1967, the same year “Sweet Soul Music” became a big hit.  Reportedly, Conley never got over the death of his friend and mentor Redding.

    The Original Inspiration: Sam Cooke

    But “Sweet Soul Music” was not created by only Conley and Redding. The two men wrote the song while jamming on the work of another great singer-songwriter, Sam Cooke.  Cooke’s song was “Yeah Man,” which had appeared on Cooke’s album Shake when the album was released after Cooke’s death.

    I first heard “Yeah Man” years after “Sweet Soul Music” and initially thought Cooke had created a variation on “Sweet Soul Music.” But the truth was the other way around. “Yeah Man” created the foundation for “Sweet Soul Music.”

    Listening to “Yeah Man,” one is not surprised that Cooke is listed as a co-author of “Sweet Soul Music” (following a lawsuit by Cooke’s surviving business partner).

    The Movie That Inspired the Opening Riff

    Our story does not end here, because there is still that great opening riff of “Sweet Soul Music” to discuss. Cooke’s “Yeah Man” was not the only tune that influenced the creation of “Sweet Soul Music.” The opening riff of “Sweet Soul Music” comes from one of the great movie scores, Elmer Bernstein’s score for the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960).

    Although like many, I know the movie’s riff by heart, I had never made the connection to “Sweet Soul Music” until reading about it. But after listening to them side-by-side, it now seems obvious. You may hear the riff in this video, set to start where the riff first appears at the 23-second mark.

    Other Versions of “Sweet Soul Music”

    The lively “Sweet Soul Music” has been performed by a number of great artists. There are wonderful recordings by artists like Sam & Dave, whose song “Hold On, I’m Comin'” is referenced in Conley’s version.

    Wilson Pickett, who is mentioned in “Sweet Soul Music” along with his song “Mustang Sally,” also has performed a version of “Sweet Soul Music.” Cyndi Lauper, Ben E. King, and Billy Joel joined forces to perform a version of the song as part of a medley on the Sixth Anniversary Late Night with David Letterman special.

    Similarly, Bruce Springsteen has performed the song a number of times in concert. I remember hearing him sing it during the 1980s at a concert in Cleveland during his Tunnel of Love tour.  Springsteen made a few lyric changes (as in the July 1988 performance below), highlighting his band and his audience.  Interestingly, Springsteen does begin by spotlighting one great singer not mentioned in Arthur Conley’s version, which had highlighted Lou Rawls, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and James Brown. Springsteen, perhaps aware of the history of the song, begins with a mention of Sam Cooke.

    At the time I heard Springsteen’s cover, I knew the original, but knew little about the songwriters or that “Sweet Soul Music” started out from a Sam Cooke song. I just knew it was incredibly fun.

    We’re still dancing to one of the greatest songs compiled by a committee of geniuses. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

    Photo of Arthur Conley via public domain.

    What is your favorite version of “Sweet Soul Music”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Here’s a Little New Year’s Song

    Over the Rhine New Year

    The Ohio-based band Over the Rhine and lead singer Karin Bergquist capture the happiness and sadness in the beginning of a new year with their “New Year’s Song.” In the lyrics, Bergquist reminds us, “Our future’s bright, the past is checkered.” The song appeared as the closing track on the band’s 2014 holiday album Blood Oranges in the Snow.

    Over the Rhine was formed by Bergquist and her husband, pianist/guitarist/bassist Linford Detweiler. Check out their “New Year’s Song,” and have a happy and safe new year.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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