Jazz
Caught in the act
Martin Gayford
Not only have astonishing quantities of jazz been recorded — I sometimes wonder whether a major musician has blown an undocumented note in the last decade but a surprising amount of it has also been filmed. Consequently, every month more jazz videos are released, and I get sent sackfuls of the things — which is tantalising since we own neither a television nor (it follows) a video recorder. Recently I began to wonder what I was missing, so I arranged to spend an evening with my friend Gavin who runs our local jazz record shop and has a collection of hot rhythm videos so large he has had to have a special cupboard built to accommodate it.
As we settled down before the box, how- ever, the question uppermost in my mind was this: Since jazz is a form of music, what is the point in watching it? Surely the thing to do is listen, possibly with eyes closed? Well, it turns out, not altogether so because jazz is such an individual, and such a photogenic, thing. One tenor saxophonist or trumpeter can express a musical person- ality utterly different from another; and these distinctions come out as much in the tilt of a head or a purse of the lips as in divergences of sound.
Our first tape, Lester Young and Billie Holiday (Green Line Vidjazz 12), made the point perfectly. Lester Young (1909-1959) was, I think, the most inspired of all jazz improvisers, and also the most determined- ly unconventional of men. Everything about him was original — his speech (an uncrackable variant of hip-slang), his dress (always topped by a pork-pie hat) and his diet (mainly vodka and marijuana). Young, more than anybody, originated our roman- tic idea of the jazz musician: he supplied most of the raw material, for example, for the central character in Tavernier's Round Midnight.
Fortunately, he was filmed himself in a short called Jamming the Blues (1944), so we can watch for ever his sad, dreamy face as he plays chorus after ravishing chorus. We can note exactly the weird, flute-like angle at which he held his tenor saxophone, and the way he had of fingering while a cigarette burned in his hand. It is not often genius is caught in the act of creation.
Billie Holiday (1915-1959) — scraps of footage of whom make up the remainder of this tape — was one of those people the camera loves. As she sang, emotions con- stantly shifted across her face, now a wry smile, now a lifted eyebrow. It is just the same as she listens to Young on The Sound of Jazz (Kayjazz 013KJ), a TV special from 1958. Billie and Lester were old friends, and neither then had long to live; on that day she looked radiant and he could scarcely stand. Even so, he played an extraordinary blues solo, described by Humphrey Lyttelton as 'noble in concep- tion, pitiful in execution', and as he does so she visibly responds to every phrase. It's a moment that brings shivers to the spine. The Sound of Jazz, which contains a whole pantheon of jazz deities as well as Lester and Billie, is perhaps the first of these cas- settes to buy.
Not much filmed jazz is that electrifying; but I found much of it pretty compulsive, if only for the period detail. The 1964 Charlie Mingus group on Charlie Mingus (Green Line Vidjazz 15) play well, but it's the spindly Scandinavian stools they're perched on that really give the period flavour. Simi- larly, the pianist Earl Hines is on spry form on Earl Hines Nice — USA (Green Line Vidjazz 22), but it's the check of his jacket — of a loudness that would stop traffic even today — that really catches the eye. As for the stage presence of Thomas 'Fats' Waller, seen in excellent quality on Harlem Roots Vol. 11 (Storyville WD866), no words can define exactly why the way he wiggles his eyebrow on that great moon-face is so irresistibly hilarious. You've simply got to see it.
In comparison, Count Basic's presenta- tion was beguilingly minimalist. He can he seen controlling his late Fifties big band on Count Basic in Concert (Green Line Vid- jazz 17) as a man might captain an ocean liner: here a touch on the ship's wheel, here a boost to the engines. Hovering behind Basie's shoulder, the camera catch- es tiny, deft movements of his hands as he applies sometimes only a single digit to the keyboard — ping! — and the band roars.
'Better than the electronic claptrap you get these days,' Gavin remarked as we fin- ished that one, and, though I don't entirely despair about contemporary jazz, I think he has a point. With every passing year, a larg- er majority of great musicians are among the dead. And that is doubtless one reason for the popularity of video jazz.
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