Rent All That Jazz (1962)
1h 50min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
lt came out of the dark heart of America, the aura, the smoke-filled essence of jazz, the music of joy, abandon, yearning! New cadences, accents, pulsations. Nights of improvisation and hot rapturous jazz and found it's way to New York's 52nd Street, Swing Street, the mecca, featuring the soul of this jazz, its voices, its prophets, its players. The 'All That Jazz' series, compiled from historical archive footage, animated photography and original music, chronicles the evolution of Jazz from it's roots in the 19th Century to the new millenium, exploring the creation, development and fusion of the music styles and all the artists who created the unique sound that is Jazz. 'All That Jazz: From New Orleans to New York' is an anthology of Jazz music which prior to the popular swing era of the 1930's and '40s is often referred to as "early jazz". Through its origins before the turn of the 20th century, jazz had evolved from a regional music, central to New Orleans and its surroundings, to a musical style at the forefront of national and international popular music by the 1930's and 1940's. The music of early jazz most often consisted of collective group improvisation. New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, was a melting pot for ethnically diverse cultures. Musical influences from Africa, Spain, Italy, South America, and French cultures combined with ragtime and other popular music of the day, particularly the blues and marching bands to create the New Orleans style. This "New Orleans" style of jazz was primarily used as entertainment for the black working class, acting as functional music for dances, parades and funerals, and could also be heard in barrel houses, gambling joints and brothels found in the Storyville section of the city. By the 1920's, Chicago had become the new center for jazz due to the migration of a large Black population from the South looking for a better lifestyle in the North. Along with this migration came the music and musicians that created the New Orleans style of jazz. In Chicago, these innovators including Jelly Roll Morton, Joe "King" Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Noone and Kid pry began to gain national recognition through their recordings and popularity in clubs. The music of these black musicians, began attracting many young white players who would eventually form their own bands including Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Pee Wee Russell. As the popularity of jazz had expanded in Chicago, it inevitably found its way to New York. The expansion of jazz from the traditional New Orleans style of five musicians to larger "jazz age" groups of usually ten musicians ushered in the next wave in the development of jazz, the big band sound of the "swing era". Jazz in New York, prior to the 1920's focused on polite and sophisticated music performed in hotels featuring waltzes and popular Broadway show tunes, however it was in Harlem that Jazz music was defined; in the speak-easy's, ballrooms and clubs like 'The Savoy Ballroom', 'The Cotton Club', 'The Appollo' and 'The Kentucky Club' amongst others where the likes of Clarence Williams, Mac Kinney's Cotton Pickers,The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra continued to extend the boundaries of the music with the introduction of additional instruments such as the vibraphone and electric guitar and Chick Webb launched the career of the Incomparable Ella Fitzgerald. This golden age of Jazz was defined, as war was declared in Europe, when Duke Ellington put together perhaps the finest orchestra of all time featuring amongst others, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Jimmy Blanton, Barry Bigard, Rex Stewart, Ray Nance, Tricky Sam Nanton and Ben Webster; and it was fitting that New York witnessed the debut of the preachers son Thomas 'Fats' Waller. - Directors:
- Jan Barwin, Egil Eikvil
- Studio:
- Quantum Leap
- Genres:
- Documentary, Music & Musicals, Special Interest
- Countries:
- Norway
