Photo via Fretless Films - fretlessfilms.com
Caroline Chocolate Drops
The Caroline Chocolate Drops
Independent filmmaker John Whitehead’s work includes documentaries on Native American culture, legendary Cajun music group The Hackberry Ramblers and the rise and fall of the classic American farmhouse.
His Wannabe: Life and Death in a Small Town Gang, was the premier episode of PBS’ “Independent Lens.” The documentary is the story of the gang-related murder-suicide that took the lives of four teenagers in Whithead’s hometown Appleton, Wis.
Maybe there was something the water. Appleton is also the hometown to actor Willem Dafoe who was an early member of Milwaukee’s Theater X acting ensemble, before venturing to Hollywood and bigger success. Also, Whitehead’s eldest brother was married to Dafoe’s sister.
Roots music
In 2005 Whitehead, also a musician, attended the Black Banjo Gathering, a conference organized by and for Black banjo enthusiasts at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. That is where the spark came for Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops' Story.
Originally released in 2019, the documentary is now streaming.
Make 'Em Dance: The Hackberry Ramblers' Story came out in 2004 and Whitehead was looking for another roots music subject. “I was learning clawhammer banjo and was starting to groove on Old Time fiddle and banjo music,” he says. “One of my music pals happened to mention that the banjo, which I assumed to be the ultimate hillbilly instrument, was actually from Africa. That blew my mind and planted a seed.”
Timing, it seems, is everything. At the 2005 he attended the Black Banjo Gathering. “That was a life changing event. I went down there with a small format video camera on a hunch that there might be a story,” he recalls.
In attendance were about 30 Black banjoists and several hundred white “banjo geeks” including Bela Fleck, Mike Seeger and others.
Talented and Charismatic
Whitehead met twenty-somethings Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens who were each there on their own. “They stuck out because they were talented and charismatic, and they were 30 years younger than the rest of the cohort. This was a year before they formed the [Carolina] Chocolate Drops.”
Whitehead taped a session with traditional fiddler Joe Thompson performing, filmed the workshops and jamming and did interviews with a handful of attendees including Flemons and Giddens.
The filmmaker knew he had something but was not sure what exactly. “I kept in touch with Dom and Rhiannon and soon heard about the Chocolate Drops who formed in the wake of the Gathering. I went back to North Carolina a year later.
“That's when I first met Justin Robinson and filmed the original trio busking, going to Joe Thompson's house, playing the Shakori Hills Festival,” he says.
Later that year Whitehead brought them to the Twin Cities where they played the Cedar Cultural Center and the elementary school show you see in the film.”
In 2008 he filmed the group playing at the Grand Ole Opry, shelved the tapes for the time and stayed busy otherwise. With other projects and commitments on his plate, with budgets and deadlines, he considered the CCD project a labor of love. He would get a little money and do some filming, but mostly the project simmered on the back burner.
Year of the Grammy
Then, in 2010, the band hit the radar and played 250 shows and won a Grammy.
“In late 2010, I was awarded The Bush Fellowship and that gave me some money to play with. I learned that Tom Ciaburri, a 19-year-old intern, had gone on the road with the band for six weeks in 2010 and he had filmed some great performances which he made available to me. So that filled in the gap.”
In 2013 Flemons left the band, things slowed a bit and Whitehead says he gained enough perspective for the story to come into focus, “the rise and fall of the band leavened with the backstory of Black string band music, Joe Thompson's mentoring, and the origins of the banjo.”
In hindsight, Whitehead is frank about the challenges of the entire endeavor. “The friggin' project took 20 years! Actually, it was more like two-three years of work but spread over 20 years. So persevering was the biggest challenge,” he says.
Another hurdle was music copyrights. There are 40 songs in the movie, 30 are public domain but 10 are copyrighted. “That's a long saga,” he says. “I had to clear those rights, and it almost didn't happen but did in the end. Let's just say doing a music film without any financing or a legal team, outside any showbiz context is a fool's errand.”
The documentary pulls no punches. Part history lesson and part study of the ups and downs of interpersonal communication in a successful group, Whitehead says feedback from the band was positive.
“They all like it,” he says. “I worked most closely with Dom, especially after Rhiannon's solo career blew up. It's been cordial with Rhiannon and Justin, but Dom is a natural archivist and was always thinking about the band’s legacy. It's a warts and all look at the band and they were ok with that. I had some pushback, and I ended up pulling back on some of the dissension which made the movie better by not straying too far into VH1 ‘Behind the Music’ territory.”
Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Story is currently streaming.
