The Roots Music of
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Explained

(Writer’s Note: If you haven’t seen Sinners yet, be warned– there are significant spoilers below.)

“There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future…”

So begins the film Sinners, the epic Southern gothic horror film from acclaimed director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther). Sinners tells of two twins, Smoke and Stack Moore (both played by a fantastic Michael B. Jordan), who open a juke joint with the help of their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) in their small Mississippi hometown in 1932. Driven by a love for blues music and a desire to create a safe gathering place for other Black people, the twins establish Club Juke at a defunct sawmill, unwittingly setting into motion a sinister chain of events.

That opening narration, which points in part to the character Sammie and his prodigious musical gifts, accompanies an evocative montage of folk imagery, as the narrator outlines the importance of musical storytellers within tight-knit communities. One such folk figure is the West African griot, a protector of oral tradition who also often served as leaders in their communities. The montage is backed by haunting resonator guitar, a musical motif that will repeat throughout the film.

Coogler tapped the GRAMMY- and Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson to score Sinners, continuing the creative partnership the two began with Coogler’s 2013 film Fruitvale Station (which also stars Michael B. Jordan). Rootsy and atmospheric, the score takes blues influences and ratchets up the tension with strings and percussion to suit the horror themes that unfold midway through the story.

Artists who perform on the Sinners soundtrack include Brittany Howard, Cedric Burnside, Rhiannon Giddens, Alice Smith and Rod Wave. Players on the Sinners score include Buddy Guy, Bobby Rush, Justin Robinson, and Leyla McCalla. Roots musician and actor Lola Kirke appears in the film, playing the character Joan, a member of the KKK who becomes a vampire.

Sinners is set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a Delta city famous for its rich blues music history and for its role in the Great Migration, which, on the whole, found over six million Black Americans leaving the southeast for large cities in other regions – including Chicago, Detroit, New York City and Cleveland – in order to flee racial segregation, Jim Crow laws and racial violence like lynching.

Dense with musical references, Sinners incorporates blues history into the naming of its characters, too. Stack’s name likely references the classic American folk song “Stagger Lee,” also known as “Stagolee” or “Stack O’ Lee Blues.” That tune tells the story of a real-life man and professional procurer, Lee Shelton, who lived in St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 1800s. Friends called Shelton “Stag” because of his perpetual bachelorhood, and, at times, “Stag” became “Stack.” On Christmas Day, 1895, Stack shot and killed a man named Billy Lyons after Lyons stole Stack’s Stetson cowboy hat, and the rest would soon become musical history.

Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners.’

The song’s original writer is unknown, and it has been recorded and performed by a bevy of artists in the intervening decades. One of the most popular recordings is performed by Mississippi John Hurt, a pioneering blues artist. In 1957, Louisiana-born R&B singer Lloyd Price rewrote the song as an upbeat rock number, scoring a number one Billboard pop hit. When Price performed the song on American Bandstand, host Dick Clark had him tone down the “violent” lyrics by giving the song a happy ending.

While Stack’s name is loaded with meaning, the name Smoke is more ambiguous, though as a pair the twins’ names could point to “Smokestack Lightning,” a 1956 song by another Mississippi blues artist, Howlin’ Wolf.

The plot kicks off in earnest when Stack and Smoke return to Clarksdale from Chicago, where they hoped to escape the Jim Crow racism of their home state. Disillusioned by the racism they still encountered once there, the brothers decide to move home to establish Club Juke, recruiting their cousin Sammie to be part of the house band. Sammie is rarely seen without his guitar, a 1932 Dobro Cyclops resonator that Göransson used to record much of the film’s score.

Stack claims that the guitar he and Smoke give to Sammie once belonged to Charley Patton, the Mississippi-born singer and guitarist widely considered to be the “father of the Delta Blues.” (At the movie’s end, Smoke reveals the truth to Sammie: that the guitar actually belonged to his and Stack’s father all along.) Showing Stack his chops, Sammie performs “Travelin’,” a song original to the film.

The emotional and artistic high point of Sinners is a surreal, mid-party musical number that connects the blues to Black music traditions from past and future eras, including hip-hop and rock and roll. The scene begins at Club Juke, with Sammie performing the original song “I Lied to You.” The character Delta Slim soon delivers a short monologue, telling Sammie, “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought this with us from home. It’s magic, what we do. It’s sacred, and big.”

When the opening narration replays after Slim’s speech, things get psychedelic. An electric guitarist dressed in ‘70s rock and roll regalia appears, shredding licks while Club Juke dances around him. A DJ booth appears, with a man in ‘80s hip-hop-inspired clothing behind the boards. B-boys dance among club-goers, and a West African griot appears carrying a drum. Time dissolves as boundaries between musical traditions blur, capturing the essence of 20th-century Black music in one stunning scene.

Trouble starts when a trio of vampiric folk musicians (yes, you read that right) tries to enter Club Juke, hoping to perform. That image of a literal blood-sucking monster in no small part resembles the white colonization of Black music, particularly blues music, adding gravitas to the unexpected plot development. The trio tries to woo their way in with a folksy version of the traditional blues song “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” made popular by Virgninia-born blues artist Luke Jordan in 1927 and the artists Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas – from Louisiana and Texas, respectively – in 1931.

(L to R) Peter Dreimanis as Bert, Jack O’Connell as Remmick, Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, and Lola Kirke as Joan in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners.’

After being denied entry to Club Juke, the trio retreats, performing a hypnotic rendition of the Scottish/Irish folk song “Wild Mountain Thyme” outside the club grounds. The song was especially popular during the American folk music revival and has been recorded by Bonnie Dobson, Judy Collins and Joan Baez, among many other artists.

As the vampire plot unfolds, the musical story takes a bit of a backseat, though a major fight scene between the remaining Club Juke revelers and the ever-growing contingent of vampires does include another major musical number. Led by Remmick, the group performs a chilling, spirited version of the hop jig “Rocky Road to Dublin,” an Irish folk music standard with roots dating back to the mid-19th century.

The next big musical moment comes after the film’s end when, taking a cue from his MCU days, Coogler includes a post-credits scene. Set in Chicago in 1992, the scene features two familiar faces: blues legend Buddy Guy, who plays elderly Sammie, and contemporary blues star Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, a member of the elder Sammie’s band.

Guy, who also performs a version of “Travelin’” on the Sinners soundtrack, was born in 1936 to Louisiana sharecroppers and moved to Chicago to pursue music when he was 21. Shortly after relocating, Guy would meet Chicago blues legend – and Mississippi native – Muddy Waters, who would become his friend and mentor. It’s a full circle moment to close out the film, and one that reinforces the importance of lineage to the blues music tradition.

Miles Caton attends the London photocall for Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners.’ (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Pictures.)

Unsurprisingly, Sinners is a movie that rewards rewatches. Coogler and his collaborators built a musical world rich with detail and allusion, and did so with what was clearly an enormous amount of love and passion. If you’re a music fan, Sinners is well worth your time – just be careful if you hear a late-night knock at your door.


Sinners is now available to stream on HBO Max and is available to rent VOD. The film is also still showing in a limited number of theaters in select markets.

All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Lead Image: Miles Caton as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Sinners.

Reba’s Best On-Screen Moments

With her signature red hair and easy smile, Reba McEntire has maintained her gilded perch in the hearts of music fans for decades. In fact, 2024 marks the 50-year anniversary of her launch into stardom. The multi-hyphenate talent grew up singing in three-part harmony with her siblings as the local treasures of their small Oklahoma town. When Reba enrolled at Southeastern Oklahoma State University to pursue becoming a schoolteacher, she continued to perform locally on occasion. Serendipitously, her delivery of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the 1974 National Finals Rodeo caught the attention of country artist Red Steagall, who shepherded her through the kindlings of her musical career in Nashville.

(L-R) Rex Linn as Emmett, Reba McEntire as Bobbie on Happy’s Place, “Fish Fry Monday,” Episode 104. Photo by Casey Durkin/NBC.

After over a decade of soaring success in country music, Reba took her first strut across the silver screen in 1990. The monster movie Tremors was just the first of the star’s rolling list of Hollywood credits. Immediately, Reba ignited a second love and poured herself into building up an acting career.

From her famous self-titled sitcom to serving as a recurring judge on The Voice, Reba’s icon status endures the test of time. For decades, she has masterfully committed to the balancing act of maintaining both her singing and acting endeavors.

Her most recent feat saw her return to the sitcom stage with the launch of her new show Happy’s Place (NBC / Peacock) in October. To honor this beloved country diva’s ever-thriving legacy, we’ve compiled a short list of our favorite on-screen Reba moments.

Tremors (1990)

A canon event for ’90s media, Reba started out strong with Tremors as her inaugural film role. This monster-studded Western cult classic is lauded for its apt casting and ’50s-esque creature feature vibes. Alongside Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, and Michael Gross, Reba stars as “Heather Gummer,” a woman living in the small desert town of Perfection, Nevada. When Heather and her neighbors find themselves under attack by formidable, underground, carnivorous creatures known as “Graboids,” they must strategically wield their wit and weapons in order to survive.

While many struggle to transition between creative mediums, Reba’s first film appearance earned her the adoration of many. Her charisma and comedic timing accentuate the film’s charm, cementing her status as a versatile star capable of straddling the worlds of both music and acting alike.

Reba (2001 to 2007)

Few have the charisma and mass appeal to headline a sitcom titled in their own name. Even fewer have the charisma and mass appeal to do so for six successful seasons! Reba, the eponymous American sitcom, was a pillar of 2000s TV, running from 2001-2007. For five of its seasons, the feel-good show aired on Friday nights ranked 4th in its time slot, often with over 4 million viewers per episode.

The show follows “Reba Harte,” a middle-aged Houstonian woman whose life is torn asunder by discovery of her husband’s affair with his consequently pregnant dental hygienist mistress. Simultaneously, Reba’s own 17-year-old daughter becomes pregnant, and Reba must flex and pivot with all of her might in order to support her children.

Though the final episode of Reba aired well over a decade ago, the 2020s witnessed a resurgence of the show’s iconic theme song through a viral trend on TikTok. “I’m a Survivor,” performed by Reba and written by Shelby Kennedy and Phillip White, became an ironic anthem perfect for dramatizing even the most mundane of inconveniences.

Happy’s Place (2024)

The Queen of Country returned to her sitcom throne again this fall when the first episode of Happy’s Place aired on October 18, 2024. Similarly to her self-titled show, Happy’s Place centers around a woman whose life has been jostled by the discovery of previously unknown, kept-secret family members. In the case of Happy’s Place, Reba portrays Bobbie, a spunky Tennesseean who has been running her late father’s bar – the titular Happy’s Place – since his death several years earlier.

Much to her chagrin, Bobbie is dumbfounded by the news that she must share ownership of the bar with her newly-acquainted half-sister Isabella, the child of her father’s illicit affair. While reckoning with her father’s infidelity and forming a relationship with a sister decades her junior, Reba delivers a performance both comedic and heartwarming. The first season will be six episodes in total and it can be streamed on NBC (Fridays at 8PM ET) or on Peacock the day after airing.

Doing Push-Ups on The Voice (2024)

@reba Push-ups and inspirational quotes…we’re working more than just our vocal cords at #TheVoice ♬ original sound – Reba McEntire

Having made her debut on The Voice during its premiere season as a “Battle Advisor” to Blake Shelton’s team, Reba’s presence has been peppered throughout the show across its entire duration. During Season 24, Reba replaced Shelton as a coach, a position she maintains to this day.

Currently in the midst of its 26th season, Reba has dazzled viewers countless times, but this moment is our favorite. Just a few weeks ago, Gwen Stefani blocked Reba (a tactic judges use to prevent another coach from adding a singer to their own team during blind auditions). In a coy ploy at diverting attention from her made-for-TV snakery, Stefani drapes her body over the “BLOCKED” graphic and begins to do push-ups. As if the moment wasn’t iconic enough, Reba pushes the scene into absurdity when she follows suit, launching into a push-up routine in perfect form, putting Stefani to shame. Reba’s feat begs the question–should she pursue a third career in athletics?

Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)

This uncommon comedy follows the journey of two oddly antiquated 30-somethings Star and Barb (played by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo) as they leave their Nevada home for the first time to venture out on a Florida vacation. The two ultimately must disentangle themselves from an evil woman’s plot to wreak havoc in the fictional Florida town.

The offbeat film’s charm is only augmented by a cameo from Reba, who graces the set as “Trish,” the embodiment of Star and Barb’s playful ideations and daydreams. Trish emerges as a water spirit to guide the two lifelong friends with her wisdom and encouragement – a role Reba, with her natural charm and benevolence, portrays with ease.

Malibu Country (2012)

With “don’t reinvent the wheel” seemingly as their ethos, the visionaries behind Malibu Country did not stray far off the beaten path. In this project, Reba returned to the world of sitcoms in 2012 to depict the role of Reba MacKenzie. Reba’s country star husband has been caught (yep, you guessed it) cheating on her and she must upheave her life. She and her two children move to her ex-husband’s property in Malibu where they start life anew and Reba decides to recommit to the music career she had abandoned in order to start her family. The show only ran for one 18-episode season in 2012/2013, but it did garner a fairly hefty viewership during its short life.

Young Sheldon (2019 to 2022)

In this Big Bang Theory spinoff, Reba guest stars as a hair stylist named June, appearing in a total of six episodes throughout seasons 3-5. June is the eccentric ex-wife of Coach Dale, the new boyfriend of Meemaw, Sheldon’s grandmother. As ever, Reba delights the show with her comedic timing and warm approach; her presence doubly adored given that Young Sheldon brought her and Annie Potts, both beloved Southern talents, onto the same screen.

She even pulled off the gaffe of a career in one scene where she sings karaoke… poorly. In addition to stealing the audience’s heart, Reba also met her current partner, Rex Linn, while filming.

Reba has proven time and time again her status as national treasure. Though just a snapshot of the legend’s perpetually blossoming career, this list demonstrates just how impactful Reba’s life as an actress has been – astonishingly while also maintaining her official title as Queen of Country, recording and releasing albums, co-headlining a residency in Las Vegas, and much more.

At 69 years old and still yet to peak, we look forward to all the Reba roles, songs, and iconicity to come.


Photo Credit: Both photos by Casey Durkin/NBC.
Lead Image: (L-R) Belissa Escobedo as Isabella, Reba McEntire as Bobbie on Happy’s Place, “Ladies Night,” Episode 107.

6 of the Best Roots Songs on ‘Songbirds & Snakes’

Years before Katniss Everdeen became the bow-wielding, redneck antihero of impoverished coal-mining District 12, there was another — Lucy Gray Baird. In the new movie adaption of the dystopian prequel to the original Hunger Games trilogy, Baird must brave the deadly annual games as well as future-President Coriolanus Snow’s affections.

If it sounds like the makings of a country murder ballad, well, you’d not be far off. Aside from being a multi-million dollar blockbuster event, the new film, officially titled The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, features an excellent original soundtrack produced by Dave Cobb and chock-full of BGS Friends and Neighbors we know and love. The rootsy songs are the perfect backdrop for boot-stomping bar scenes and the desperate struggle against an authoritarian regime that eventually led to the villainous Snow’s power grab. They’re also just plain good!

If you’re new to the Hunger Games, to these artists, or to roots music, we’re happy to be your guide. With performances from Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, Sierra Ferrell, Charles Wesley Godwin, Bella White, and more there’s something here for bluegrass and Americana fans of all ages. But there are also hidden gems in Rachel Zegler’s performance. Zegler, who portrays Baird, plays a guitar influenced by a very famous finger picker indeed.

In no particular order, here are six of the best roots tunes on the official Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie soundtrack.

“The Garden” – Sierra Ferrell

A slow-moving acoustic, country-ish standard with emotional fiddle swells, Americana firebrand Sierra Ferrell performs “The Garden” on the official soundtrack. The tune features a wistful dream of a green garden watered with something other than salty tears, and of better days ahead.

“Bury Me Beneath the Willow” – Molly Tuttle

Together, Molly Tuttle and Dominick Leslie provide the guitar and mandolin parts heard throughout much of the film, but also on “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.” This tune is more of a bluegrass standard and features Tuttle’s iconic picking style and vocals. The lyrics speak of deep betrayal by a lover.

“Nothing You Can Take From Me” – Rachel Zegler

In the official featurette video for this tune, Rachel Zegler whips a gathered crowd into a barn-stomping frenzy with her vocal performance on “Nothing You Can Take From Me.” While District 12 workers clap and dance and Zegler sings, Molly Tuttle revealed in an Instagram post that she provided the guitar parts.

“I played Lucy Gray Baird’s guitar parts and Dom [Leslie’s] parts are in the Covey Band,” Tuttle said in her Instagram caption. “I was nerding out the whole time we worked on this. Fun fact: the guitar I recorded with is the same one that you see [Zegler] play in the movie. The choice of guitar was inspired by the archtop Gibson that Maybelle Carter plays.”

“Burn Me Once” – Bella White

Bella White’s haunting, vibrato-filled vocals hang in the air on “Burn Me Once,” a finger-picked acoustic tune. The lyrics speak to being heartbroken and wishing for true love with a new, more mature partner.

“Cabin Song” – Billy Strings

By far one of the fastest, hardest-driving tunes comes – perhaps unsurprisingly – from Billy Strings. Employing his famous guitar-picking skills on “Cabin Song,” Strings sings of wishing to go back to the woods.

“Winter’s Come and Gone” – Charles Wesley Godwin

Seasonally appropriate given the movie’s November release date, Charles Wesley Godwin’s smooth but gritty vocals lends the perfect tinge of darkness to lyrics about a little bluebird, being left in the rain and snow, and not having enough money to see the winter through.

Even if you’re not a fan of The Hunger Games, it might be worth hitting up the theatre to support roots music featured in such a high-profile and recognizable title. Or, you know, you could just download, stream, or purchase the soundtrack — it’s available on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you get your folk-y tunes!


Lead image of Rachel Zegler as Lucy Baird screenshot from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) Special Feature ‘Music.’

Nicolas Winding Refn Brings Rare Country Music Films to UK’s Black Deer Festival

Since he made a name for himself with the 2011 neo-noir film Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn has become synonymous with sleek, glossy visuals and pristine synthetic pop. That makes him an unlikely figure to participate in this month’s Black Deer Festival, the new boutique, UK weekender celebrating Americana and country music.

But the 48-year-old Denmark native has demonstrated his interest in US culture throughout his career, starting with an obsession with cult exploitation and horror movies that spawned a coffee-table book of posters (The Act of Seeing, 2015). Then there’s the archive of some 200 movies that he’s restored under the banner of his byNWR project – three of which are to get a rare public screening at Black Deer. They include a 1965 concert film featuring George Jones and Loretta Lynn, as well as a musical country and western comedy he describes as “like a Carry On movie, shot in the South.”

Based in Copenhagen, Refn is a frequent visitor to the States, where he once lived as a child. It explains the light transatlantic twang to his near-perfect English. But the fascination with American culture began before that, he suggests. “I think it started back when I was eight years old,” Refn recalls, “and my mom was in New York, basically assessing if this was a place we were gonna move to. So, she had been away for a couple of weeks, and she sent me a package with a 45 of Willie Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again.’ Ever since then, I’ve always had an infatuation with that kind of country and western, and the more that I started learning about it, the more I started getting into it.”

Refn’s taste in Americana and country should be apparent from the films he’s selected for Black Deer. The first is Forty Acre Feud (1965), featuring comedy turns and musical performances from a host of stars from Minnie Pearl and Skeeter Davis to Ray Price. “It’s one of those strange country and western films that was specifically made for the Southern market,” says Refn. “It’s from an archive of a director called Ron Ormond. We happen to own his entire library in the collection. He made these very peculiar Southern-oriented drive-in movies. They very rarely even made it to the north in America. They’re very, very much part of a specific kind of illusion of America.”

Refn is as fascinated by the director’s backstory as the film itself. “The interesting thing about Ron Ormond is that he and his wife June ran a mom-and-pop exploitation business down South, and they would fly around in a private plane to collect revenues from the various drive-ins. Then they had a near-fatal crash that made them very religious, and they turned their bag of tricks to the whole religious crowd in the South, and started making films like If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, which was produced by a guy called Estus Pirkle, who was a real hardline pastor. It’s quite an infamous religious propaganda movie about Communism spreading through the US.”

Perhaps the more conventional of the three titles is Ray Dennis Steckler’s Wild Guitar (1962), in which a young rock ’n’ roller gets into the music business and falls foul of a manipulative manager. “That’s a really interesting flick,” says Refn. “It’s a great kind of document of Los Angeles in the early ‘60s. It was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, a famous cinematographer that went on to win multiple awards for his work with much bigger directors, like Steven Spielberg. But as a film it’s actually quite a groovy coming-of-age, kind of cautionary tale about rock ‘n’ roll. It has some great rock songs in it. In fact it has everything in it: dames, music, good photography, gangsters, guns, fights, love, and mayhem.”

Rounding off Refn’s three choices is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers (1967), one of only two films directed by the lesser-known Larry E. Jackson. “It’s an amazing, low-grade It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World kind of thing — with fantastic country and western music in it. And they play the whole songs until the end. It’s quite surreal in a way. It’s a bit like a Jacques Tati movie, I guess. It’s more like a comedy really. It’s just a really, really fringe comedy of a certain era that’s gone. It’s very innocent and kind of quirky in a way. But the music is just absolutely outstanding, and the way that the musical numbers are introduced is just fantastic.”

Each of these films, with their ragged edges and primal, analogue sounds, will come as a surprise to those who only know Refn from his recent English-language work and see him as a pioneer of the digital era. “I always say you have to love and embrace all kinds of music,” he observes. “For me, a lot of it is about, ‘Is it sincere? Is there something within it?’ I think if you always approach music like that, then in a way there’ll be something in all genres that touches you.”


Photo credit: Kia Hartelius (portrait); Scott Garfield (with car)

Watch a Preview of Dolly Parton’s ‘Coat of Many Colors’ Movie

Ladies and gentlemen, the most wonderful time of the year is nearly upon us: the release day of NBC's television adaptation of Dolly Parton's 1971 hit "Coat of Many Colors." And now, Parton herself has shared a trailer for the autobiographical film, which tells the true story of a coat her mother made for her in the wake of a family tragedy. 

"The great Smoky Mountains, my home … I have so many memories of growing up here," Parton explains in the trailer. "This Christmas, I would love to give a gift to you. My favorite song that I've ever written tells a true story from my childhood about a little coat that my mama made for me." 

In the clips that follow, we see Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles as Parton's mother Avie, scenes from the Parton family's impoverished life in the mountains of East Tennessee, and the pivotal moments that eventually led Parton to become one of the world's most beloved musicians.

Get a first glimpse of Coat of Many Colors below, and be sure to tune into the premiere on December 10 at 9/8 Central. 

H/T: Rolling Stone Country