The sound of jazz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The sound of jazz
Studio album by Various Artists

Publication
(s)

1957

Format (s)

VHS

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

10

occupation

production

Robert Herridge

Studio (s)

CBS Studio, New York

The Sound of Jazz was a CBS jazz television showthat was broadcast live from CBS Studio 58 (Town Theater, 10th Avenue) in New York City on December 8, 1957. The film is known for the clash of jazz legends of the most diverse styles and, with “ Jazz on a Summer Evening ” from the Newport Festival 1958, is one of the classic jazz films of the 1950s.

The show is particularly famous for showing some of the best surviving film documents from such jazz greats as Billie Holiday and Lester Young and capturing their reactions to one another - sometimes as a background listener. Holiday and Young, whose collaboration was famous in the 1930s, meet here again after a long time, both already marked by drug problems. Lester Young could only play in “ Fine and Mellow ” (for health reasons) and is no longer featured on the rest of the recording. Both died less than two years later in 1959. The film shows a nod of agreement from Billie Holiday at the end of Lester Young's solo.

The spectrum ranged from a swing all-star big band led by Count Basie , to Thelonious Monk , who played his classic "Blue Monk" with his own trio, and West Coast musicians such as Gerry Mulligan (who was an all-star in Count Basie Big band played) and Jimmy Giuffre (with his classic "The Train and the River") to Dixieland Jazz under the direction of Henry Red Allen .

The broadcast took place as part of the CBS series "The Seven Lively Arts". Moderator of the demanding series, which only ran from 1957 to 1958 and u. a. The first television broadcast of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite was the well-known TV critic ( New York Herald Tribune ) John Crosby. The musical advice for the film was with the jazz critics Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett , from whom the initiative came together with Herridge.

Overall, the meeting took two days in a row, the day before the rehearsals were after Billie Holiday invited many of the musicians to dinner (she was in a good mood and exuberant). The mood of the musicians was often good after many years due to the unexpected reunion and interaction. The weather in New York was bad on both days (snow storm) and some musicians weren't feeling well. Lester Young was in a low mood, he appeared at rehearsals in slippers and he did not go to the Billie Holiday party that followed.

The one-hour film was also released on VHS / DVD, but there are different cut versions of it (CBS let the copyright expire).

Pieces

In the TV movie:

  • (1) The Count Blues - Basie, Green and Eddie Jones play while John Crosby gives introductory remarks.
  • (2) Open All Night (Fast and Happy Blues) - Count Basie All Stars. The "All American Rhythm Section" of the Count Basie Orchestra of the 1930s and 1940s is almost complete except for Walter Page on bass, who was too sick at the time of recording (he was still at rehearsals the day before, but broke on the Away to the TV studio together and died 2 weeks after the recordings) and can only be heard on the LP. Eddie Jones from the Basie Band replaced him.
  • (3) Rosetta (by Earl Hines, William Henri Woode), with the Henry Red Allen-led Dixieland Combo, which also includes swing musicians like Rex Stewart and Coleman Hawkins.
  • (4) Wild Man Blues (by Louis Armstrong): Instrumentation as in "Rosetta".
  • (5) Blue Monk - Thelonious Monk Trio. You can see Basie (who is watching Monk at the piano), Rushing and Hawkins listening in the background. Monk was already a bebop legend back then, and with its flat cap and sunglasses, it also fulfills expectations on the outside.
  • (6) I Left My Baby - Basie's old companion (as early as the late 1920s), the blues shouter Jimmy Rushing sings accompanied by the Count Basie All Stars (cast as in "Open All Night")
  • (7) Dickie's Dream - Count Basie All Stars as in "Open All Night". Billie Holiday enters the studio and can be seen listening in the background and talking briefly to Basie at the piano.
  • in the television movie, there was now a commercial break for the Ed Sullivan Show.
  • (8) Fine and Mellow , Billie Holiday sings with the "Mal Waldron All Stars". According to Nat Hentoff, the undisputed climax of the film. “After four bars of intro Billie sings the first verse. Cheatham accompanied by a muted trumpet. The voice is exhausted, brittle, but with an expression that gets under your skin. ”Each verse sung is followed by two choruses, in which two instrumentalists play solo in the following order: Webster, Mulligan, Young, Vic Dickenson, Mulligan, Hawkins, Eldridge. "A blues of the sad kind, but the recording is one of the great moments of jazz."
  • (9) The Train and the River - Jimmy Giuffre Trio. Giuffre also explains his piece. Perhaps the producers saw the future of jazz in this at the time.
  • (10) Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave to Me (Blues Jam), the final piece with the modernist Jimmy Giuffre and the Dixieland musician Pee Wee Russell in a duet on the clarinet.

Monk's contribution is missing on some DVD editions, but sometimes there are also:

  • "Jumpin 'With Symphony Sid"; Count Basie Orchestra
  • "South"; Coleman Hawkins and Red Allen
  • "Dali" Coleman Hawkins

On the Columbia Records LP, 1958

The LP is not recordings of the television broadcast, but recordings made four days earlier on December 5, 1957 in the CBS studio. Mulligan is absent (he charged too high a fee) and has been replaced by Harry Carney . Monk - who was known for his unreliability - had not appeared for the recordings (and until the end it was uncertain whether he would appear for the television recordings). In addition, Frank Rehak (trombone) plays instead of Benny Morton. Mal Waldron, who was still a relatively unknown companion of Billie Holiday, has an additional solo with his composition Nervous due to the failure of Monk .

page 1

Side 2

  • 5. I left my baby
  • 6. The Train and the River
  • 7. Nervous - Mal Waldron (piano solo)
  • 8. Dickie's Dream

Web links

References

  1. ↑ The circumstances of the concert, of course with Billie Holiday in a central role, are described in detail at the end of the Billie Holiday biography by Julia Blackburn (Berlin Verlag 2006)
  2. ↑ where Milt Hinton also took photos
  3. ↑ See Hentoff Fine and Mellow (NPR)
  4. ^ Bernd Klostermann, in Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 , p. 149.