Cadillac Records tells the story of the beginning of Rock & Roll
Cadillac Records tells the story of the beginning of Rock & Roll
Fans of musical dramas may experience some deja vu while watching "Cadillac Records"; the story is remarkably similar to one told in the middle of 2006's "Dreamgirls," in a montage set to "Steppin' to the Bad Side." There's the plucky upstart studio where African-American musicians are pioneering new kinds of music. There's the driven record-label owner who's dispensing payola to deejays, trying to buy his way past institutionalized racism and cross over from the R&B ghetto to the white-dominated pop charts. There's the white group that steals a black musician's song and turns it into a hit single. There are lots of flashy new cars as symbols of success.
And above all, there's the music, the motivator and the moneymaker, the one thing that heals all wounds—or at least in the case of the blues, expresses them.
In "Dreamgirls," the sequence is a flashy, fictionalized amalgam of events from the Motown era. In "Cadillac Records," it's straight-up history. The fi
