The instructional DVD — “The Blues Guitar of Hubert Sumlin” — is a mix of genius and boredom. When Hubert is playing: Pure Genius. When “interviewer” Jimmy Vivino is interrupting Hubert: Boredom.
Learning how to play The Blues via DVD can be a tense and tedious experiment, but when Hubert is allowed to speak and play, he is purely delightful:
The quality of the DVD is a little gritty and vocalist David Johansen looks like he just woke up and doesn’t really want to be there, but we can’t let these small slights from the sidebar affect our love and respect for Hubert Sumlin — who found his Blues joy backing up Howlin’ Wolf on guitar 50 years ago — and the 60-minute DVD leaves us wishing for more of Hubert and less of everyone else.