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Jazz Doc: Stéphane Grappelli
European jazz starts with Stéphane Grappelli and the Hot Club of France Quintet. The violinist along with guitarist Django Reinhardt added Louis Vola on bass and Joseph Reinhardt and Roger Chaput on guitar. The group ended its run in 1939 with the onset of World War II. Grappelli was in London when war broke out and remained there for the duration. Reinhardt was in Paris. They would reunite after the war. Grappelli is the father of the jazz violin and ...
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Miles: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
Known in English as Elevator to the Gallows, this 1958 French crime film is notable for three reasons: The movie, directed by Louis Malle, launched French new wave cinema. It stars Jeanne Moreau, one of France's finest actresses and a personal favorite. And best of all, Miles Davis improvises throughout. In a nutshell, the film is about two lovers who become involved in a murder plot and are foiled when an elevator's power is cut. The rest is too complicated ...
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Jazz 625: British Jazz
Between April 1964 and August 1966, BBC2 in the U.K. aired an hour-long TV show called Jazz 625. It was broadcast on 625-lines UHF rather than the 405-lines VHF system then used by the other channels. This allowed for a better signal at home. What was particularly noteworthy about the show is that it began airing after a long-running dispute between the U.K. Musician's Union and the American Federation of Musicians was resolved. This allowed American musicians to perform in ...
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Britain Plays the Blues
How did all those British rock bands learn to play the blues in the 1960s and why were they so fascinated by the form? What was the unlikely impact of the Yardbirds, the Animals, the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, John Mayall, Cream and other British bands introducing white audiences to the blues in the U.S.? Most people think their education came from blues records they got their hands on in the U.K. And that playing here was something of an ...
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Frech Doc: Bud Powell
To fully feel the beauty and grace of jazz at its highest level, you must appreciate the sadness that comes with the joy and the poetry that's baked into the music's history. They are one, like two sides of a coin. Virtually all of the exceptional jazz musicians had tragic sides, making one wonder whether greatness was even possible without the demons and deep sadness. Yesterday, Matt LeGrouix sent along a link to a stunning French documentary on Bud Powell ...
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Stan Getz: The Movies and TV
By the mid-1950s, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz had become a sensation as a soloist and started to be featured in films. A few years later, Getz's horn could be heard in European films and then American films upon his return to the U.S. in 1960. From the 1960s until his death in 1991, Getz was heard regularly on TV shows such as Ironside and The Courtship of Eddie's Father as well as in movies. Here are 13 clips of Getz ...
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Doc: Toronto Jazz (1963)
In 1963, Toronto was a bustling jazz center akin to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The city's jazz establishments flourished after Ontario's Liquor Licensing Board changed its dining lounge rules in 1946 to permit live venues to sell alcohol. Toronto became a destination for Canadian musicians and for touring American artists. Clubs ranged from the posh Imperial Room at the Royal York Hotel to the House of Hambourg, George’s Spaghetti House, the Colonial and Bourbon Street, to name just ...
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Pete Rugolo and the Beaver
The death of Ken Osmond last week came as a shock to anyone who grew up watching TV's Leave It to Beaver in the early 1960s. The shock for me wasn't that Osmond had died but that he had been alive all this time. The word on the playground in the late 1960s and early '70s was that the guy who played Eddie Haskell had died in Vietnam. Everyone believed it, and why not? Obviously, that wasn't the case, but ...
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