SEVEN-PART BLUES SERIES A BLEND OF HITS, MISSES.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

BEING AN AFICIONADO of something doesn't necessarily entitle one to produce a seven-part documentary miniseries about it. For proof, look no further than ``Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues,'' premiering tonight and running through Saturday, and making acclaimed filmmakers like Wim Wenders, Clint Eastwood, Mike Figgis and Charles Burnett sometimes seem like foundering dilettantes.

Declaring at the outset of his opening-night film, ``Feel Like Going Home,'' ``I can't imagine my life - or anyone else's - without music,'' Scorsese makes a wan attempt to justify this impressionistic mishmash of films. Each director was allowed to focus - if ``focus'' is the right word, and it probably isn't - on whatever he wanted: Hence, they omit and trivialize swatches of blues history, offer key insights in passing and belabor minutiae.

The filmmakers often seem like cinematic versions of Richard Dean Anderson's MacGyver, tinkering together films from what's available in the room with them, rather than creating a fully realized product - Ken Burns they're not.

Scorsese's contribution is a lazy affair featuring under-edited front- porch conversations with old bluesmen and lacking the bristling passion of his documentaries about the movies that influenced his life. Largely, he turns the reins over to an earnest musician, Corey Harris, who travels through the Mississippi Delta and perpetuates blues myths/cliches like, ``You feel the blood and the mud of the Mississippi Delta in the music,'' and, ``I hear the music as if it were in the air.''

Lots of missed connections define ``The Blues.'' Typical is Marc Levin's film, ``Godfathers and Sons,'' which declares a through line from blues to hip-hop without really connecting the dots, just by throwing Marshall Chess of the old Chess Records blues label and Public Enemy's Chuck D together in the same room to banter.

Mike Figgis' ``Red, White and Blues'' is the biggest head-scratcher, featuring British blues musicians offering piecemeal remembrances, which is a little like doing a documentary about baseball by interviewing cricket players. Someone mentions Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel performer who played a mean electric guitar: Revealing her story would be far more interesting than listening to guys say they heard her perform; characteristically, we get the latter, not the former.

The series' most solid entries are also the most straightforward: Richard Pearce's ``The Road to Memphis'' and Eastwood's ``Piano Blues.'' ``Memphis'' charts the fortunes of a handful of bluesmen who emerged from the city's scene, from the wildly successful (B.B. King) to the just- paying-the-bills (Bobby Rush) to the nearly forgotten (Rosco Gordon), as they return for a reunion concert. Visiting Beale Street, where they used to play, they lament its steamrollering into one big tourist trap today.

Eastwood's is a cozy variation on Scorsese's film done with proper affection: He sits down with Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck and others and shoots the breeze about their favorite music, occasionally inviting them to riff on their instrument.

Wenders and Burnett try to get fancy. Wenders' installment, ``The Soul of a Man,'' is a droll valentine to two obscure musicians, Skip James and J.B. Lenoir (when it comes to the blues, the more obscure your heroes, the cooler you are). He amusingly relates James' story like an old silent film and lets two amateurish filmmakers tell of their inept travails trying to get Lenoir on Swedish TV.

``Warming by the Devil's Fire,'' Burnett's film, deals most explicitly with how race informed the music, but uses an odd fictionalized framing sequence to spur its civics lesson.

Performances naturally comprise the series' highlights - Wenders recruits an impressive and eclectic array of musicians, including Los Lobos, Lou Reed, Casandra Wilson and Lucinda Williams, while Figgis managed to get the great but crotchety Van Morrison to participate. Archival footage brings the greatness of past legends to new audiences.

Nonetheless, it's possible to watch ``The Blues'' without feeling impassioned, or impassioned anew, about the music, something that was not true about Burns' foursquare but far more eloquent ``Jazz.'' And that may, in the end, give you the blues most of all.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS THE BLUES - Two and one half stars

What: Seven-part documentary on the musical genre.

Where: KCET.

When: 9 tonight through Saturday.

In a nutshell: Uneven and not terribly insightful; rescued by occasional winning installments.