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Head Rag Hop is bright, colourful, fun and, despite its references to
old-time America, a thoroughgoing evocation of the time it was made. It cuts
flash frames and stylised, cartoonish text to a risqué 1929 boogie woogie number
of the same title by Romeo Nelson (with vocals by bluesman Tampa Red and
vaudeville singer and sometime female impersonator Frankie Jaxon), its speed
matching the frivolity and celebratory nature of the song.
The lyrics of the song are punched out in vividly-coloured hand-drawn text,
which reflects a 1960s fascination with typography, while the word 'it' is
written in the style of the British counter-culture's house magazine, the
International Times, further emphasising the film's cultural allegiances. Its
use of cut-outs, camera zooms and image manipulation is similarly evocative of
the period. The use of collage and photography to reframe found images and text
was common in all manner of media at this time, most notably in pop art and the
work of Bob Godfrey and Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, both of whom were strongly
influenced by the Polish animator, Walerian Borowczyk.
The images used in Head Rag Hop depict various early blues, jazz and big band
musicians, among them Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Patten,
Duke Ellington and, especially, Nelson himself. Much of the popular culture of
the late 1960s looked back to the 'authenticity' of the blues and raided the
iconography of the recent past. The Rolling Stones best typify the attempt of
the new generation to approximate the 'primitive' sounds of early blues;
elsewhere, references to Victorian and Edwardian Britain and the decline of the
British Empire abounded, as on the sleeve and overall concept of the Beatles
1967 album, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Head Rag Hop, with its
speed and garishness contrasting with its photography evoking hard times in the
American South, looks to the past and the lasting impact of particular moments
on the modern cultural imagination.
William Fowler
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Complete film (2:47)
