For the nationally syndicated telecasts, Allen hired the creative team behind the Emmy-winning Stars of Jazz series of the 1950s, and for once the visual style of jazz on TV matches the verve and spontaneity of the music. Cameras consistently zoom in for close-ups of fleet fingering or pull back for unusual compositional shots. Pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. is viewed between high-hat and ride cymbals on the drummer's kit; overlapping camera shots superimpose an image of Yusef Lateef's oboe on Sam Jones's bass strings in the Adderley group; Teddy Edwards's face floats momentarily in the bell of his own tenor sax as he takes a solo. The cameramen even know the solo order, panning to the keyboard a few bars before the piano solos begin. The arty visuals never overwhelm the music, serving instead to amplify or parallel it. When Newborn invokes Ravel with a dazzling unaccompanied intro to Billy Strayhorn's Lush Life, the screen fills with an impressionistic fusillade of fingers flying in and out of focus; startling close-ups show us Jimmy Smith's foot on the organ's bass pedals, then the drummer's feet working the high hat and bass drum pedals. We see how Smith gets his huge sound, sustaining a note by holding his thumb down on one key while furiously working the other four fingers of the same hand. More than anything in all of these videos, the production crew seems to be having at least as much fun as the musicians. There's a loose-limbed feel to the camera work and the editing that has never since, in my experience, been matched by other television presentations of jazz, and only rarely by film documentaries.

Succinct historical context, musical commentary, and brief interviews with the leaders are provided by host Oscar Brown Jr., who appears completely at ease and in the know - an enlightened choice for the job at a time when there were few if any black hosts on TV. The shows were taped live and then transferred to 35mm film, so these videos have none of the graininess of early jazz kinescopes. Their only handicap is the somewhat limited gene pool of Southern California musicians; you can't help wishing that Mingus, Miles, or Coltrane had been shot in such optimum conditions. But that's a quibble; the everyday level of the jazz caught here is exceptional, making the series a revealing document of jazz circa 1962. If I had to pick just one of the tapes, it would be the Newborn-Smith shows - two extraordinary keyboard masters with utterly different styles, each giving a flawless performance. Newborn's legendary two-fisted prowess is graphically displayed, the almost eccentric combination of classical training, blues feeling, and post-bop swing; and Jimmy Smith is nothing less than mesmerizing during three extended numbers on the Hammond B-3 organ, accompanied by guitar and drums. His electric organ work was an inspiration not merely for other jazz organists but also for a whole generation of electronic piano and synthesizer artists from Chick Corea to Herbie Hancock, few of whom ever approached his symphonic sense of swing. Shanachie, 1962, 52 minutes each, B&W

At an outdoor concert somewhere in Europe in the mid-1960s, steam literally rises off the overheated bodies of drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison as they accompany a soprano sax solo by John Coltrane, whose performance can only be described as possessed. The visual quality of the tape is almost surrealistically bad, resembling a fifth- or sixth-generation dub of a home movie, and the muddy, poorly mixed sound is an audiophile's worst nightmare. Yet the music Coltrane is creating, unfolding in chorus after chorus of the sentimental Rodgers and Hammerstein chestnut "My Favorite Things," will change the shape of jazz and, to some extent, popular music, for decades to come. This stunning footage is one of the highlights of The World According to John Coltrane, Toby Byron's hour-long film on Coltrane and his astonishingly wide influence on American music of all kinds. I include it here because, although in many ways it follows the format of the standard documentary, it incorporates extraordinary clips of studio and live sessions that are much longer than usual for a documentary.

The voice-over narration, written by jazz critic Robert Palmer (who also wrote a series on rock and roll that aired recently on Public television), succinctly traces Trane's musical and spiritual development from the Holiness churches of his childhood through the rhythm and blues bands of saxophonists Arnett Cobb and Earl Bostic to his emergence as a dominant figure in the world of jazz. It also explains his fascination with both European concert music and Indian and Middle Eastern modal music. In clips like the one described above as well as TV studio sessions, Coltrane blends melodic motifs, modal harmonies, and authentic blues feeling to build an upward spiral that in its yearning for transcendence is part devotional hymn, part psychedelic sound exploration, and always completely captivating. The miracle of Coltrane, which the film is careful to convey, is that he was able to revolutionize jazz and help to usher in the avant-garde while appealing to mainstream jazz fans and having a profound influence on both "serious" and popular musicians. In the words of early Minimalist composer LaMonte Young, Coltrane was able to "project right out into the world without any sense of commerciality." His choice of "My Favorite Things" as a frequent vehicle for his musical investigations was a masterstroke that allowed a wider public to appreciate the sonic intricacies he constructed on a song familiar to almost every American. Coltrane's great gift to jazz was to combine the cerebral pleasures of endlessly inventive improvisation with the emotional and somatic involvement of a heart in search of the Divine, and that accomplishment is made shiningly clear in this video's generous performance footage. However, the box in which it comes makes several rather grandiose claims that don't pan out, among them that it is "the definitive and only authorized film" on Coltrane, having enjoyed the cooperation of his widow, Alice. The latter claim may be true, for what it's worth, but this tape in no way supplants Burrill Crohn's admirable Coltrane Legacy, even if the film footage it adds is essential. It also claims to ignore "the conventions of the standard musical documentary." Hardly, although it does modify the usual ratio of talk to performance, for which we can be grateful. Comments from former Coltrane drummer Rashied Ali, piano great Tommy Flanagan, bassist Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, LaMonte Young, and Alice Coltrane make valuable points about Trane's role in transforming American music beyond the scope of jazz, influencing not only the Minimalist composers Terry Reilly and Philip Glass but also rock bands like the Byrds. Yet these same points are made in much greater depth and detail in Eric Nisenson's book Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest. The tape further boasts the earliest known recording of Coltrane, on which he plays alto sax on "Koko" with a Navy band in 1946; inexplicably, a voice-over makes it impossible to hear any of the snippet clearly. And the color footage of Coltrane it offers as unique is just silent footage that has been dubbed. Having said all that, I still recommend the tape both to neophytes who are curious about this legendary figure and to devoted fans who will not want to be without the concert footage unveiled here.

Apart from Jazz Scene USA, most of the great jazz presented on television in the 1960s was broadcast in Europe. While the U.S. was virtually ignoring its most adventurous players - Monk, Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy - Europe was airing them all to appreciative audiences. Taped in Oslo in 1964, Charles Mingus Sextet not only showcases one of Mingus's most elegant small groups but also lets us see and hear Eric Dolphy riding the upward thrust of a wave that never crested: later that year he died in Germany of a diabetic coma. Along with Clifford Jordan on tenor sax and Dannie Richmond on drums, the sextet featured Johnny Coles, who may be the most underappreciated trumpet player in jazz. Before becoming an expatriate in Europe, where he lives today, Coles was a fixture in the Herbie Hancock Sextet during that wonderfully futuristic-acoustic period after Hancock had left Miles but before the dreary days of Headhunters. He plays here with a range of tonal colors to rival Miles himself, and with an adventurous heart that appears to be missing from the current generation of young trumpeters. Pianist Jaki Byard makes every note count, as usual, and breaks into an infectious stride chorus on "Take the A Train." Mingus is his provocative self, tossing off comments, gestures, and bass solos with the same sardonic wit. But the minute Dolphy gets off his stool and starts playing alto sax or bass clarinet, the other luminaries seem to fade into the background just a bit, like stars around a full moon. Eric builds an entire bass clarinet solo (on "A Train") on a series of death-defying leaps from the instrument's rasping high register to its deep-throated bottom, then turns it into a raunchy blues wail that has Coles grinning from ear to ear. Clifford Jordan has the unenviable job of following that solo, and he makes it on pure soul. This is a desert island video if ever there was one. Shanachie, 1964, 59 minutes, B&W

"Monk's famous mannerisms never distract the camera from the music," read the liner notes for Monk in Oslo, recorded two years after the Mingus tape. But just the sight of Thelonious standing beside his piano blinking his eyes expectantly while listening to Charlie Rouse's tenor solo, the flaps of his Scandinavian hat pulled down over his ears, is riveting, suggesting a man waiting for some crucial information to be delivered or a physicist lost in a thorny problem. If few pianists are more engaging to watch in action, none is more fascinating than Monk when not playing the piano.

This half-hour set taped for Norwegian TV finds his classic quartet in nearly telepathic communion. Rouse, bassist Larry Gales, and drummer Ben Riley had been with Monk for two years, and although they probably don't belong in the highest firmament of post-bop instrumentalists, their Spartan clarity and spareness (Riley's drum kit consists of only bass and snare drums, ride and high-hat cymbals) is perfectly suited to Monk's idiomatic twistings and turnings of rhythm and harmony. So, oddly, is the crisp, no-nonsense approach of director Harold Heide Steen Jr., who sets the quartet on a barren stage, often in long shots that make them appear like figures in a Dutch still life. He is careful, though, to shoot plenty of close-ups showing Monk's peculiar cross-handed soloing, the occasional forearm bash to the keyboard, and all that great body English. What this too-brief video lacks of the complexity that made Straight, No Chaser the definitive Monk film is made up for in distinctness and lucidity. And the music is ideal. Three tunes long associated with Monk - his "Round Midnight" and Blue Monk and the 1935 Harry Warren gem "Lulu's Back in Town" - are familiar enough to allow the viewer to concentrate on Monk's way of fracturing and reintegrating melodic lines with the sense of humor that is never absent from his best work. Rhapsody Films, 1966, 33 minutes, B&W

Part 3

lingo 5

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