Wilson Pickett

Finally released from prison, Elwood Blues is once again enlisted by Sister Mary Stigmata in her latest crusade to raise funds for a children's hospital. Hitting the road to re-unite the band and win the big prize at the New Orleans Battle of the Bands, Elwood is pursued cross-country by the cops.

Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.

A small town band makes it big, but loses track of their roots, as they get caught up into the big-time machinations of the music biz. Now, they must thwart a plot to destroy their home town. Built around the music of The Beatles, this musical uses some big name groups like Peter Frampton and Aerosmith.

Hosted by comedian Redd Foxx, …& Beautiful was the first syndicated television special produced for African American audiences to be sponsored by a Black-owned company (Johnson Products, makers of Afro Sheen). Dynamically stylized with Afrocentric and psychedelic designs and costuming, the vibrant production represents an invaluable late-’60s audiovisual time capsule documenting the joy, liberation and empowerment of the Black Is Beautiful movement.