Sprout Wings and Fly

There's not much to be said about this 30-minute documentary profiling an Appalachian musician and his community that isn't already in the film itself. The late California filmmaker Les Blank's documents of regional America and the music and food of its inhabitants are national treasures, lovingly observed portraits of vanishing cultures. This one features legendary fiddler Tommy Jarrell, well known to musicians, folklorists, and the people of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, and it's rich with roots music, folk wisdom, family life, and reminiscences both wry and touching. Blank shares directing credit here with others, including Cece Conway, an Appalachian literature and culture scholar, and Alice Gerrard, a musician herself who had recorded and performed with noted bluegrass singer-composer-musician Hazel Dickens (1925-2011). Gerrard was featured in two later music documentaries, Hazel Dickens: It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song (2002) and Mike Seeger: To the Universe (2009) about Gerrard's one-time husband, a musician and folklorist who was the half-brother of folk legend Pete Seeger. Also credited is Blank collaborator Maureen Gosling, his longtime editor and sound recordist. The two worked on 14 films together, including the award-winning Burden of Dreams (1982), about the troubled production of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982), and many of Blank's greatest documents of the regional U.S., among them Hot Pepper (1973), Chulas Fronteras (1976), and Always for Pleasure (1978). Sprout Wings and Fly premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in October 1983. Its release was sandwiched between two of Blank's better-known, longer films, the already noted Burden of Dreams and his polka documentary In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984). Tommy Jarrell was 82 when he appeared in this film. He had made his living for many years in road construction until retiring in 1966, but his true calling was the music of the region of North Carolina's mountains around Mount Airy, where an annual festival is now held in his honor. Jarrell's influence extended beyond the Appalachian region, winning him the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 1982. He died a couple of years after this film's release. Blank, Conway, and Gosling put together an even shorter piece on Jarrell from previously shot footage, edited years after the fiddler's death, My Old Fiddle: A Visit with Tommy Jarrell in the Blue Ridge (1995). The trio also made a film featuring the stories, folk wisdom, and traditional dancing of Jarrell's sister, Julie: Old Time Tales of the Blue Ridge (1991). The siblings appeared in both films. Directors: Les Blank, Cece Conway, Alice Gerrard, Maureen Gosling By Rob Nixon