Jammin' the Blues

...may seem like an overstatement, but it is not.

What is so hard to comprehend is - why didn't they make more musical shorts like this? Wasn't the beauty of it totally apparent to everybody involved? I guess not. So many shorts were made for commercial reasons only, and with some luck there may be some artistic value in there. This is one exception - the only one? - where it seems they were the director had a vision and clearly could appreciate the music as art. Why didn't anybody ever think to shoot Lester or Charlie Parker on a live date? Crazy, man.

A pity there were no sequels. If you've seen anything of similar quality please share it!

I have seen this ten minute short several times on T.C.M.it is a swinging jam session featuring some of the GREATEST jazz musicians that every lived. It has been told that when they filmed this short at the Warner Bro.studio lot that some of the great actors with Warner Bro. such as Humphrey Bogart, Bettie Davis, Edward G. Robinson Etc. stopped what they where doing to hear this jam session through out the day. One damper on this short was the fact that Barney Kessell was filmed silhouetted so that a white musician was not identified playing with black musicians.

Simply but imaginatively filmed studio-set performance short, a perfect match of music and images that defines the very coolness of cool and the hipness of hip. The precise visual and musical arrangements give the lie to its claim to be a record of a jam session: what it is, is a pop video - every bit as stylised and knowing as that implies, and all the better for it. Among the very best music films ever made, and almost certainly the most cinematic. These cats are solid gone, daddy-o ...

Wow, it is hard to believe this film was made in 1944. If it were released today, sixty years later, it would still be regarded as stylish and avant-garde. I caught this on a cable channel in the US called Turner Classic Movies (TCM). It was the lead off short in a series of musical shorts compiled to form a two or three hour special. I cannot stress how ahead of it's time this film was. The photography was very clever, such as using Lester Young's hat as a indefinable symbol in the opening shot, pulling back as Lester raises his head revealing his face. A "jam" session opens the short, Marie Bryant sings "On the Sunny Side of the Street" with velvety perfection, then another number which features jitterbug dancers. A good film to show today's artists that clever ideas didn't begin with their generation.

Good news for Jazz fans, I understand Rhino has released a compilation titled ‘Hollywood Swing & Jazz' comprised of numbers from these old musical shorts, which features, among others, the Marie Bryant number from this film.

Each of the major studios cranked out jazzy one-reelers throughout the thirties and forties (with Universal taking the lead). While most looked as cheap on screen as they were to make, Warner Bros. (which abruptly stopped making them in 1946) often distinguished theirs with offbeat camera angles, mirrors and optical effects, thanks to some creative directors like Jean Negulesco. It is fitting that the best of this genre should come from this studio.

What sets "Jammin' The Blues" apart from the rest of the pack is that it more closely resembles an avant-garde experiment than a Hollywood musical. Filmed in July 1944, it transforms an ordinary jam session into a "trippy" dream-escape from war-time troubles, highlighted by the tune of "On The Sunny Side Of The Street". Gjon Mili and cameraman Robert Burkes (later to work with Hitchcock) were allowed plenty of artistic freedom, perhaps because Lester Young was not Glenn Miller and the studio could care less how he and his fellow musicians were presented. The optical printer is put to good use, with multiple images of the same performer appearing at once. (Norman McLaren really milked this process two decades later in "Pas De Deux", while Linwood Dunn's team achieved different effects in "Citizen Kane".) The strong emphasis on silhouettes and lit cigarette smoke was also ahead of its time; in some ways, this predated the psychedelic sixties, but with a distinctly forties film noir style.