This is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking from 1935. It runs just under ten minutes but is well worth your time. “Symphony In Black” is a short film featuring Duke Ellington and his band, with guest appeareances by Billie Holiday and Scatman Crothers, believe it or not. (Holiday sounds like
Sunday. Spent much of today in jazz-geek heaven, listening to transcriptions of old WRVR broadcasts of “Just Jazz with Ed Beech”. Beech was a New York based d.j. who made discography sound suave. Using a Shakespearean-trained actors voice (at least according to his publicity) he filled New York radio with
Last Night (7/5) at Birdland, in New York City, I heard the impeccable and impeccably modest jazz giant Hank Jones at the piano with his trio. At age 89 (and after a recent heart episode) he is naturally somewhat less authoritative in his approach, but never less than elegant and
Who was Jackie Paris? And what has he to do with the future of independent film? Start with the name, which sounds like a crooner invented by Jim Thompson or some other hard-boiled noir paperback artist of the past. But It was his real name (sort of). Jackie Paris (born