That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

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Part III: The Beat Goes On: Jazz Appreciation 101
personal art and the music he makes to earn a buck. When he duets with
Doris Day and departs from the score to improvise a few catchy lines,
the conductor tells Douglas to stick with what’s written.
� The Benny Goodman Story: Steve Allen in The Benny Goodman Story
(1955) barely scratches the surface of what it means to live a life in jazz.
The music here is excellent (the soundtrack is actually Goodman), but
important facts about Goodman’s career are left out of this Hollywood
tale of a star player’s rise to fame and fortune with his 1938 performance
at Carnegie Hall as the climax (well, that much is true). Goodman’s childhood
poverty, his black heroes like clarinetist Jimmie Noone, his experiences
learning jazz from leading black jazz musicians, his hiring of black
arranger Fletcher Henderson to heat up the Goodman band’s sound, his
gutsy integration of his band — important turning points like these are
mostly missing. Instead of showing late nights, uncomfortable bus rides,
bad food, and unscrupulous promoters, this movie is a sanitized version
of jazz. I cover Goodman in detail in Chapter 6.
� Round Midnight: For me, the modern film that cuts closest to the core
of what a jazzman’s life is probably like is Bertrand Tavernier’s Round
Midnight, with the laconic, chain-smoking, musically brilliant saxophonist
Dexter Gordon in the lead role. Gordon says more with actions than
words. When he performs, you can tell immediately that this is a jazz
musician playing jazz, not an actor. Here’s a world-weary artist living one
moment at a time. You get the sense that in a career in jazz, nothing can
surprise him. One major downside to casting actors as jazz musicians is
that no matter how much they try, their technique never looks quite
right (see Sean Penn in Sweet and Lowdown). See Chapter 7 for more
about Gordon.
� Bird: For comparison’s sake, Tavernier’s film, with both Dexter Gordon
and his music, is more infused with jazz than Clint Eastwood’s 1988 Bird,
with Forest Whitaker playing Charlie “Yardbird” Parker (who I cover in
Chapter 7). But Bird still ranks as the best contemporary jazz film, combining
excellent music and acting with a compelling story crafted from
the ups and downs of Parker’s life.
� Kansas City: This movie (1996) has some great music and great period
costumes and settings. Given Robert Altman’s reputation for spontaneous
filmmaking, it’s surprising that he didn’t do more with the wealth
of jazz talent on hand (more than a dozen top players, including bassist
Ron Carter, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and vocalist Kevin Mahogany).
Someone still needs to make a Hollywood film set amid Kansas City jazz,
although this movie had a positive effect by bringing jazz to a mass audience
for jazz.
Documentaries
More than Hollywood feature films, several fine documentaries offer unflinching
portrayals of jazz and its heroes. My favorite examples include