A Well Spent Life: No Man Like Mance

Les Blank’s documentaries focusing on musicians are wonderfully easygoing and authentic. Watching films like A Well Spent Life, a 1971 portrait of Texas blues guitarist Mance Lipscomb, one senses a relationship of total trust between subjects and filmmakers. In this excerpt from a supplement on our collector’s edition Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, Blank collaborators Chris Strachwitz and Skip Gerson sing the documentarian’s praises, especially the way his movies elucidate music by showing the lives and environments that create it.