Back in 1971, Melvin Van Peebles wrote, produced, directed and starred in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, an X-rated cheapie that hit box-office pay dirt by capturing the rage African-American audiences felt toward the white establishment. The film became the black Easy Rider and sparked the blaxploitation era in the 1970s, movies made by blacks for blacks. Now Melvin's son, Mario Van Peebles (Ali, Panther), has lifted a chunk from his father's memoirs and reconstructed the making of that seminal film by directing, co-writing and starring — quite credibly — as Melvin in Baadasssss! The son doesn't flinch from his dad's faults, right down to Melvin casting a thirteen-year-old Mario as a boy getting his first taste of sex in a whorehouse. The film is technically raw, but the sight of Van Peebles playing his father at a defining moment in movie history exerts a potent fascination.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."