Man with a Golden Arm

Shorty Rogers and his band plays the outstanding soundtrack to Man with the Golden Arm the story of a drug addict with Frank Sinatra in the Title Role Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker play the two women inhis life

King Of Jazz 1930

I have only seen the 1930 Paul White Band film King of Jazz on TV,. Unfortunately Bix Biederbeck had left the band just before the film was made but Joe Ventui had not and Bing Crosby has an appearance. The tile is a stretch and is more a musical with Busby Berkley type scenes.

Jazz on a Summers Day 1960

The most important me film has been Jazz on a Summer’s day viewed the day after my release from the six months in prison for Operation Foulness in 1960, The film featured many of the artists used as a backing track to the film All Night Long including Louis Armstrong who I have seen live in Croydon as well as jack Teargarden, the Trombonist. The audience is older and college kinds 1960 style in contrast from those attending the Soho Oxford Street jazz cellars in the fifties and early sixties. The film intersperses the Jazz festival at Newport Rhode Island with the Americas Cup races in1958 which added to emotions of my experience.

Lady Sings The Blues

I also experienced Lady Sings the Blues again, the story the great jazz singer Billie Holiday whose records I have on several disk sets. The film follows her life and addiction with loss of licence. And struggle to regain with a concert at Carnegie Hall, the classical music venue which also hosted some key Jazz performs including Benny Goodman where I still hold the two volume LP set. Although she make to Carnegie Hall going back in drugs she fails to regain her licence and dies at the age 44 but her back catalogue is extraordinary and makes her one her jazz immortals. The film is week made with Diana Ross in the role and making a good stab at recreating the voice.

Its Trad Jazz 1962 ( jazz)

Its Trad Dad 1962 cashed in on the ribal of traditional jazz in 1957 964 in the UK before being overtaken by Rock and Roll. The film has echoes of Blues Brother as the city father do everything they can to sop a live show after a couple of teenagers appeal to David Jacobs to promote the cause after a Juke Box is removed from a local coffee shop,

All Night Long ( Jazz) 1962

All Night Long (1962) has music by David Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan Tubby Hayes, Chico Hamilton Thelonius Monk, Sonny Stitt, Anita O Day, George Shearing, Dinah Washington. Louis Armstrong. In this black and white film story is irrelevant.

Paris Blues

Films with traditional jazz or swing band music are few and far between. Paris Blues was shown again during the year and enjoyed. The film has Joanne Woodward and Dianne Carroll from the USA playing two young women having a trip of a lifetime in Paris encountering Paul Newman at the station who invites to visit the Jazz cub where he plays with Sidney Poitier a refugee from home racism and under the conventions of the day the two couples becomes paired according to race. Carroll is strait laced and only interested in a conventional relationship and returning home while Newman already has a woman friend and is not interested in anything serious. Needless to say the women dictate what happens and there is some good jazz with Dike Ellington heading the sound track and with Louis Armstrong guesting.