AllMovie

This program features a look at the black culture and blues traditions of Texas. Nowhere do blues run deeper than in Deep Ellum. In the 1930s and 1940s, blues musicians performed for African-Americans, as well as curious white outsiders, including gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd. Archival photographs and film clips show great musicians, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, entertaining the crowds. Cigarette Blues presents the band Sonny Rhodes and the Texas Twisters. Their act in a California nightclub is interspersed with variations on a blues theme by the audience and the musicians.