Jammin' The Blues
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1995. | ||
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Jammin' the Blues is a 1944 American short film made by Gjon Mili and Norman Granz in which a number of prominent jazz musicians re-create the jam-session atmosphere of nightclubs and after-hours spots. It features Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, Marlowe Morris, Sid Catlett, Barney Kessel, Jo Jones, John Simmons, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant and Archie Savage.
Why It's Jammin' The Blues
- From 1926 (when Warner Bros. started using the Vitaphone process to introduce sound to moviegoers) until World War II, the format for musical shorts didn't change very much. The earliest musical shorts were strictly representational, capturing performances as if they were theatrical and on stage. While the setting would occasionally change, heavy cameras and inadequate microphones limited directors to change perspectives. Eventually, postdubbing freed cameramen from stationary positions, and allowed musical shorts to take on more of a narrative framework. Jammin' the Blues was different from most musical shorts, partially because it was directed by Gjon Mili, a freelance still photographer who had helped develop the use of flash and strobe lights to capture dance and athletics.
- Norman Granz was the ringer in the crew for the film. He had previously promoted jazz concerts in Los Angeles nightclubs and insisted on integrated audiences and not having dancing due to wanting audiences to pay attention to the music. Eventually he decided to stage "jam sessions" for the public, which --unlike "battle of the bands" nights -- tended to be private. He realized the public would like seeing musical stars pair up with peers in a concert setting. This short film served as free publicity for Granz's project which would later become "Jazz at the Philharmonic", and feature all of the musicians from the short film as well as other jazz stars such as Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ben Webster.
- Early musical shorts assumed that viewers knew what they were watching, but Jammin’ the Blues adopts the pedantic tone of an educational film. Viewers could be watching a lecture about cave paintings or ethnic dance, delivered in the hushed tones of a museum tour guide. By dressing it with modernist flourishes, the short wants to enshrine jazz as high art. Fortunately, Granz and Mili love the music as much as its musicians, and are acutely aware of how best to frame them.
- Lit and framed as towering, almost mythical figures, the musicians in this short make the music they are playing seem mysterious and romantic, even if they are miming to prerecorded tracks. Lester Young becomes a moody, film noir figure wreathed in cigarette smoke. Harry Edison delivers his trumpet solos oblivious to the motion around him (or the camera, for that matter). For better or worse, many future jazz artists used these performances as models, slipping into similar roles both on- and off-stage.
The Film