Posted in Videos on Nov 25th, 2007
A few years ago I caught a late-1940s Robert Mitchum movie on AMC called The Big Steal. Mitchum played an Army lieutenant on the run in Mexico, trying to absolve himself of a stolen payroll for which he’d been framed. His feminine foil was Jane Greer, as a woman disillusioned and exploited by her playboy lover (portrayed by Patric Knowles). Rife with crackling dialogue and great south-of-the-border scenery, the film also hooked me with an epic chase scene (in which Greer, not Mitchum, is the driver), a progressive-for-its-time treatment of the leading lady and the Mexican police officers, and an engaging chemistry…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Nov 9th, 2007
A couple of years ago I did a Night Lights show about Oscar Brown Jr., a singer and songwriter I’d long admired for his compositional skills, his vocal verve, and his cultural and political activism. With his hip, cocksure, proto-rap delivery and tunes such as “Mr. Kicks,” “Forty Acres and a Mule,” and “Bid ‘Em In” that combined humor and strong social messages, he was a pioneer of early-1960s vocal jazz. At the time I felt Brown was undercelebrated for his accomplishments, both as an artist and as a figure of inspiration. Several months after we aired the program…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Oct 27th, 2007
From piano-noir master Ran Blake, just in time for Halloween–New England-area readers and listeners, take note:
Spiral Staircases
Ran’s fall student performance focuses on one of his favorite films, the psychological murder mystery Spiral Staircase. Fittingly, the show falls on Halloween…
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Posted in Shows on Sep 10th, 2007
The Connection was a groundbreaking 1959 off-Broadway play from New York City’s Living Theater group, written by Jack Gelber, that cast jazz musicians as heroin addicts waiting for a score. Artists that passed through the play included pianist Freddie Redd (who composed the original score), alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, and pianist Cecil Taylor. The Connection was made into a 1961 movie directed by Shirley Clarke, who would go on to…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Sep 4th, 2007
“Jazz and Jack Kerouac” is now archived…apologies for the one-day holiday delay. For more jazz-and-Jack-Kerouac, check out our previous show, The Subterraneans, which explores the jazz score for the only film to be adapted from a Kerouac novel to date, as well as the story behind the movie and some dialogue clips from it. (The film itself…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Aug 23rd, 2007
As we head into this weekend’s “I Want to Live!” program, with Susan Hayward as a jazz-loving murder suspect, here’s a suggested companion show from our archives: the December 2004 program The Wild One. Released at the end of 1953, The Wild One is a key entry in the cinematic annals of jazz-as-the-soundtrack-of-rebellion (rendered here by Leith Stevens and some of the emerging West Coast usual suspects)… and it’s interesting to consider that…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Aug 20th, 2007
“The Duke Pearson Songbook” is now archived for online listening. Extracurricular track: the Art Farmer Quintet doing Pearson’s “Is That So?”, available on The Time and the Place/the Lost Concert.
Information about this week’s program, “I Want to Live!”, is now posted, along with the film’s theatrical trailer. Here’s a clip from the movie itself:
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Posted in Shows on Aug 20th, 2007
Based on the true story of accused murderess Barbara Graham, the 1958 movie I Want to Live! employed a jazz soundtrack written by Johnny Mandel and performed by such jazz stalwarts as Gerry Mulligan, Bud Shank and Art Farmer (who appeared in the movie’s opening scenes), along with Frank Rosolino, Jack Sheldon, and Shelly Manne. Susan Hayward (who met a grisly demise in many of her films from the 1940s and 1950s) played Graham, a woman with a troubled past and a real-life jazz and Gerry Mulligan fan who…
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