hcaraso

I saw this movie when it was issued in France and several times since, but I never enjoyed the sound of it so much. To my opinion, it's the best movie about jazz together with YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, described in JAZZ MAGAZINE, 1957 About a decade ago, I learned the awful pretended story of Glenn Miller's death over the Channel. I discussed it with members of the band after a show in Paris; they dismissed it, of course, and I think it must me forgotten, leaving intact the souvenir felt yesterday all over the movie and its fantastic sound. I think I never watched the sequence with Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa and Cozy Cole. Harry Carasso, Paris, France

The above tune, one of Jimmie Lunceford's first, has nothing to do with BLUES IN THE NIGHT, but I think it fits perfectly the film. I am a jazz and movie buff, and maybe the first whom managed to write an essay on both, in 1957. My preference was that Michael Curtiz's YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN was the best example of how to make a film about jazz.Recently, I grasped a conversation between two French critics on TV, describing Anatole Litvak's 1941 film as the one who shows how these typical American arts may cooperate. I also discovered David Meeker's JAZZ IN THE MOVIES, listing more than 2000 titles. Then I ordered BLUES IN THE NIGHT from Amazon, and I received a real gem. The previous 19 comments were fully positive, and Jimmie Lunceford appeared almost immediately with Jack Carson blowing a trumpet with his band. Followed a very good combination of film noir and swing. T'AIN'T WHAT...etc., is EXACTLY what I feel about the job done by the Warner Brothers, Tolya Litvak, Betty Field, Lloyd Nolan and all the film celebrities who made long and fruitful careers after WWII. The only thing I wish to stress is that the Amazon DVD contains also the actual trailer of the movie and last but not least, a full rendition of the famous JAMMIN'THE BLUES, certainly the best jazz movie of all times. Now that you have read my divagations, hurry up and grab a copy of BLUES IN THE NIGHT, while they last.harry carasso, Paris

According to my memory, Artie Shaw was pleased to give Ms. Berman a break when accepting to build with her a two-hours rendition of his long life but regretfully short carrier (he hanged up his clarinet in 1954, and I missed his New Year appearance at the Toronto Colonial Tavern). I know a jazz fan from Ottawa who spends frequently winter vacations in former Shaw's property at Begur, Spain. The pity with Artie Shaw is that he always wanted to be an intellectual, as he puts it in THE TROUBLE WITH Cinderella: while playing with his band in a crowded dancing auditorium, with dancers disturbing him to the point of almost swallowing his instrument, one of them fell into the orchestra pit and Artie Shaw quipped: "there goes another Booth, John Wilkes Booth!"!not realizing that in the audience, there were hardly two couples who realized that he was referring to Lincoln's assassin, who also fell in the orchestra pit while trying to escape from the fatal theater. After his death, I wrote an obituary in a French magazine, from which I am copying the end: " The souvenir of Artie Shaw, uncrowned king of the clarinet, is still remaining among all the generations of his long life (94 years),thanks to his immortal success (spelled by him $ucce$$):Begin the Beguine,Frenesi and Lady Be Good, described by an Italian jazz critic "here we are breathing pure Basian atmosphere, with full lungs". Harry Carasso, Paris, France