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…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Jul 22nd, 2007
In 1949 former Stan Kenton bassist Howard Rumsey began a series of Sunday afternoon performances at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, California, a club that had formerly catered mostly to merchant marines and other sailors. These jam sessions eventually spawned the collective known as the Lighthouse All-Stars, featuring many…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Dec 9th, 2006
Multi-instrumentalist Victor Feldman was a musical prodigy who sat in on drums with Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band at the age of 10 and was hailed by the English press as “Kid Krupa.” After continuing his rise to fame in the 1950s British jazz world, Feldman moved to America and eventually made his way…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Sep 2nd, 2006
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
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Jun 10th, 2006
In 1949 former Stan Kenton bassist Howard Rumsey began a series of Sunday afternoon performances at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, California, a club that had formerly catered mostly to merchant marines and other sailors. These jam sessions eventually spawned the collective known as the Lighthouse All-Stars, featuring many of the 1950s’ best West Coast jazz musicians…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on May 13th, 2006
The Subterraneans, the only novel of Jack Kerouac’s to be adapted to film so far, was released in 1960, when the media fever surrounding the Beat Generation (much of it inspired by the publication of Kerouac’s On the Road in 1957) was still at a high pitch. Hollywood took great liberties with Kerouac’s story…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Oct 22nd, 2005
Peter Gunn was a hit TV crime show with jazz at its center that ran from 1958 to 1961, with Craig Stevens (described as “a poor man’s Cary Grant”) as the stylish, jazz-loving private detective…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Dec 4th, 2004
The Wild One, Marlon Brando’s 1953 motorcycle-gang movie, was based on a real-life 1947 incident in which thousands of bikers, many of them blue-collar World War II vets from Los Angeles, descended upon a northern California town and frightened its inhabitants…
Continue Reading »