(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
— David Hudson, IFC.com
The
Sound of Jazz, a one-hour, one-shot program, broadcast on December
8, 1957 and available on VHS for many years, is an absolute must for
any jazz fan, because it allows us to see "Fine and Mellow," the best
of the very few video performances available from the incomparable Billie
Holiday. Holiday had been a heroin addict nearly all of her adult
life, but somehow, with less than two years to live, she still looks
great.
2 Sitting comfortably
on a stool, she almost seems to be talking rather than singing, but she
delivers an emotional impact that leaves all her would-be competitors
in the dust. It's Billie first, and the rest nowhere. It's not just that
she's the best, it's that no one else even comes close.3
Unlike The Sound of Jazz, the Swing, Swing, Swing disc has
several satisfying extras. Sal Mineo fans (I know you're out there) will
be glad to see their boy in a 1958 appearance on the TV show I've Got
a Secret, plugging his film The Gene Krupa Story (eventually,
Gene shows up too). As a special bonus, Executive Producer Joy Adams performs
a deliciously chanteusey "Memories of You" over the closing credits.
All
of the musicians who appeared on The Sound of Jazz recorded the same
tunes they played on the program at a studio session several days earlier.8 (There was, naturally, no home video in that technologically primitive era, so an LP was only way to make the performances available.) The "Sound of Jazz" LP has been released as a CD, and it's worth having, because it includes a complete version of the closing number for the program, an excellent blues that united clarinetist Pee Wee Russell with the Jimmy Giuffre Trio. On the actual broadcast, voice-overs and promos pretty much ruined the piece.
Proper Records in the United Kingdom has "Proper Box" 4-CD sets for many
of the musicians discussed here, with excellent documentation and very
low prices. (All of the material was recorded prior to 1951, and thus,
under UK law, is no longer subject to copyright.) You can access their
website here, although you'll
have to order from somewhere in the U.S. unless you can pay in pounds.
The "JazzScript" website
has an enormous amount of information on jazz.
1. The Sound of Jazz also gives us a priceless look at fifties kitsch in the form of an ad for a GE Theater presentation of Eyes of a Stranger, starring Tallulah Bankhead: "Playing a woman who has had a deep need to surround herself with a train of admirers over whom she can tyrannize, Miss Bankhead has a role tailored to her dynamic talents. Then an eye operation brings about a strange character change when this social despot discovers she's been given the eyes of a priest." Where is this video!
2. Apparently, if you want to live miserably, die young, and have a good-looking corpse, heroin is the way to go.
3. To be fair, contemporary jazz singers face an impossible task. Most of their repertoire consists of songs that are, on average, sixty years old. How can an art form grow when it's chained to the past and has no connection with the present?
4. This DVD, issued by Music Videos Distributors, is the sloppiest DVD I've ever seen. The back panel has a picture of Charlie Parker, who did not appear on the show, in part because he'd been dead for three years. There are two "audio-only" cuts on the disc, one of which, though listed as "East of the Sun" by Sarah Vaughan, is not "East of the Sun" and is not by Sarah Vaughan.
6. Unfortunately, I can't tell what film it is. Goodman and Krupa both appeared in a number of films that are available on home video, but films with the original band, notably Hollywood Hotel, haven't been released on either VHS or DVD.
6. "Soundies" were cheaply filmed, three-minute shorts that were not shown in theaters but rather on movieolas — refrigerator-sized video jukeboxes that sat in hotel lobbies and bars in the forties. Production values ranged from lame to awful, but there's a lot of great material on soundies that ought to be made available. Duke Ellington made several dozen soundies in the early forties, with one of his greatest orchestras, the "Blanton-Webster band," so named for the presence of Jimmy Blanton, who invented modern jazz bass playing, and tenorman Ben Webster.
7. The Gene Krupa Story was the third and least of a series of swing bios made in the fifties. The Glenn Miller Story (1953), starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson, was a huge hit. The Benny Goodman Story (1955), starring Steve Allen and Donna Reed, was not. Krupa appeared as himself in both films.
8. All except Thelonious. For some reason, he didn't show at the recording session.
9. If you buy the single CDs, look for them in a discount outlet. Sony has churlishly limited them to about 50 minutes of music, even though a CD will hold 70.
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