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The Sound of Jazz

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The Sound of Jazz
Title Card for "The Sound of Jazz"
Presented byJohn Crosby
StarringCount Basie
Billie Holiday
Thelonious Monk
Red Allen
Jimmy Giuffre
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish.
No. of episodes1
Production
Executive producersNat Hentoff
Whitney Balliet
Charles H. Schultz
Camera setupMulti-camera
Running time54 minutes
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseDecember 8, 1957 (1957-12-08)

"The Sound of Jazz" is a 1957 edition of the CBS television series Seven Lively Arts, and was one of the first major programs featuring jazz to air on American network television.

Overview

The one-hour program aired on Sunday, December 8, 1957, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, live from CBS Studio 58, the Town Theater at 851 Ninth Avenue in New York City. The show was hosted by New York Herald-Tribune media critic John Crosby, directed by Jack Smight, and produced by Robert Herridge. Jazz writers Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett were the primary music consultants.

The Sound of Jazz brought together 32 leading musicians from the swing era including Count Basie, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Jo Jones and Coleman Hawkins; the Chicago style players of the same era, like Henry "Red" Allen, Vic Dickenson, and Pee Wee Russell; and younger 'modernist' musicians such as Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, and Jimmy Giuffre. These players played separately with their compatriots (see the song list below), but also joined to combine various styles in one group, such as Red Allen's group and the group backing Billie Holiday on "Fine and Mellow".

The show's performance of "Fine and Mellow" reunited Billie Holiday with her estranged long-time friend Lester Young for the final time. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff, who was involved in the show, recalled that during rehearsals, they kept to opposite sides of the room. Young was very weak, and Hentoff told him to skip the big band section of the show and that he could sit while performing in the group with Holiday.

During the performance of "Fine and Mellow", Webster played the first solo. "Then", Hentoff remembered:

Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard, and [he and Holiday] were looking at each other, their eyes were sort of interlocked, and she was sort of nodding and half–smiling. It was as if they were both remembering what had been—whatever that was. And in the control room we were all crying. When the show was over, they went their separate ways.[1]

Within two years, both Young and Holiday had died.

Noting that the cameras were employed as "straight reportorial tools", Jack Gould observed in a New York Times review: "It was the art of video improvisation wedded to the art of musical improvisation; the effect was an hour of enormously creative and fresh TV."[2]

The Sound of Jazz was also released as a recording by CBS' then-subsidiary, Columbia Records, although the gramophone version is actually a rehearsal that preceded the telecast (recorded on December 4 at Columbia's 30th Street studios), and is not its soundtrack. The LP was released in 1958 as Columbia CL 1098, with liner notes by Eric Larrabee, and the cover photo by Tom Yee. It is the only LP of a Seven Lively Arts presentation. The recording does not include all of the performers on the TV show (Mulligan refused to participate because no additional payment was involved) and includes several who were not on the show. Bassist Walter Page rehearsed, and is featured on the LP, but collapsed on the way to the studio for the telecast. In the early 1980s Bob Hilbert's Pumpkin Records released the LP The Real Sound of Jazz which is the actual soundtrack to the television program.

Personnel

Trumpet

Trombone

Clarinet

Alto Saxophone

Tenor Saxophones

Baritone Saxophone

Guitar

Piano

Bass

Drums

Vocals

Songs

On VHS/DVD

  • Open All Night (aka Fast and Happy Blues) - Count Basie All Stars: Emmett Berry, Doc Cheatham, Joe Newman, Joe Wilder (tp); Roy Eldridge (tp, flhn); Vic Dickenson, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells (tb); Earl Warren (as); Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster (ts); Gerry Mulligan (bs); Count Basie (p); Freddie Green (g); Eddie Jones (b); Jo Jones (d)
  • The Count Blues - Basie, Green and E. Jones playing as John Crosby introduces the show.
  • Wild Man Blues - Composed By Louis Armstrong, Performed by: Henry "Red" Allen, Rex Stewart (tp); Pee Wee Russell (cl); Coleman Hawkins (ts); Vic Dickenson (tb); Milt Hinton (b); Danny Barker (g); Nat Pierce (p)
  • Rosetta - Composed by Earl "Fatha" Hines and William Henri Woode. Personnel same as Wild Man Blues.
  • Dickie's Dream - Same personnel as Open All Night
  • Blue Monk - Thelonious Monk (p); Ahmed Abdul Malik (b); Osie Johnson (d) (does not appear on 2003 idem DVD release)
  • I Left My Baby - Jimmy Rushing (v), with Count Basie All Stars (personnel same as Open All Night)
  • Fine and Mellow - Billie Holiday (v), with Mal Waldron All Stars: Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham (tp); Vic Dickenson (tb); Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young (ts); Gerry Mulligan (bs); Mal Waldron (p); Milt Hinton (b); Osie Johnson (d)
  • The Train and the River - Jimmy Giuffre Trio: Jimmy Giuffre (cl, ts, bs); Jim Hall (g); Jim Atlas (b)
  • Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave to Me (appears on idem DVD release, 2003), performed by Jimmy Giuffre, Pee Wee Russell (cl); Jo Jones (d); Danny Barker (g); Milt Hinton (b).

(personnel and tracks listed on [3])

DVD Extras (Not on idem DVD release, 2003)

On the 1958 LP

Side 1

  • Wild Man Blues
  • Rosetta
  • Fine and Mellow
  • Blues - Jimmy Giufffre (cl), Pee Wee Russell (cl), Jo Jones (d), Danny Barker (g)

Side 2

  • I Left my Baby
  • The Train and the River
  • Nervous - Mal Waldron (p) solo
  • Dickie's dream

References

  1. ^ Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America's Music (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) p.405
  2. ^ The New York Times, December 9, 1957, p.55
  3. ^ "The Greatest Jazz Films Ever", idem home video, IDVD 1059.
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