13 best jazz dvds

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Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool tells the story of the legendary trumpeter, bandleader, innovator and trend-setter who crossed musical genres and whose life was notable on and off stage. Directed by award-winning documentarian Stanley Nelson, the film features Miles’ music from live performances, studio recordings and outtakes, as well as interviews with those who knew Miles best (Quincy Jones, Santana, Wayne Shorter, etc). Includes bonus DVD disc of live footage from the Montreux Jazz Festival.

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Disc 1: DOCUMENTARY Disc 2: BONUS DVD – LIVE FROM MONTREUX 1. Ife 2. Star People 3. It Gets Better 4. Hopscotch; Star On Cicely 5. Lake Geneva 6. Star People 7. Hopscotch

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Recording superstar Neil Diamond makes his movie debut in The Jazz Singer, the 1980's updated version of the Al Jolson classic, as a fifth generation cantor who struggles to find expression through his own songs in the highly competitive world of popular music, He is opposed by his tradition-bound father, portrayed by Laurence Olivier, who is convinced that his son is betraying his birthright by striking out on his own. Although Diamond abandons the synagogue for America's own national religion, show-business, he returns to the faith - and the synagogue - to sing Kol Nidre in the place of his stricken papa, Lucie Arnaz also heads the cast as a gutsy manager who falls in love first with the man's work, then with the man himself, Catlin Adams stars as the tradition-bound wife who doesn't understand her husband's desire to leave the safe community provided by the synagogue, The movie features 10 songs composed and recorded live on film by Diamond, whose music has entertained millions of people throughout the world for more than two decades.

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The jazz label was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, and Sonny Rollins. This film about jazz is a testimony to the passion and vision of label founders.

Review

The film incorporates gobs of classic Blue Note music -- the label's roster included just about every viable figure in modern jazz -- along with live footage both vintage and more modern, scads of black-and-white still photos, interviews (Herbie Hancock, Max Roach and any number of behind-the-scenes folk), anecdotes and more. -- Creative Loafing/Tampa, Eric Snider, October 1, 2008

"The film is packed with performances and interviews from many jazz legends and jazz lovers, a true testament to the legacy of Blue Note, with an acknowledgment of the label's rebirth and its quest to continue the work that Lion and Wolff started almost 70 years ago.." -- Mishmashmusic.blogspot.com

...this was a film I could not stop watching once it started. Director Julian Benedikt did a masterful job of interweaving oral history, first-hand accounts of the way the label worked, performance clips, and both still photos and film of the label's founders. What emerges from this kaleidoscopic view is essentially the truth: that Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff initiated the label in response to a personal vision and somehow, stubbornly, maintained that vision until the jazz world collapsed. -- Fanfare Magazine, Lynn Rene Bayley, June 2008

Although that might sound like something straight out of a hipster's Aesop's Fables or, maybe, Steve Allen's 'Bebop's Fables', the story of Blue Note Records is a real-life, triumphant tale recounted with narrative skill in an invaluable documentary...Using rare archival footage, classic Blue Note recordings, still photographs and the recollections of musicians, critics and other observers, 'Blue Note-A Story of Modern Jazz' colorfully recounts the story of the label and its prime movers, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, the Romulus and Remus of the jazz recording business. -- Hartford Courant, Owen McNally, August 2008

Ask mountain climbers about peaks, and they start with Everest. Ask jazz fans about record labels, and it's Blue Note. Founded in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, a pair of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, Blue Note set an unmatched standard for consistent quality, innovation, and devotion to jazz.

There's nothing quite like that unmistakable Blue Note sound - crisp, solid, densely propulsive. Lion and Wolff recorded everything from trad and boogie-woogie to avant-garde, but its musical home was hard bop - jazz at its most muscularly swinging. "Even in the ballads," bassist Ron Carter says in the 1997 documentary "Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz," "there was some swing going on." (Or as Lion and Wolff would say in their accented English, "schwing.") There's also nothing quite like the look of Blue Note albums. Wolff was a gifted photographer, and the pictures he took of Blue Note recording sessions are classics. Art director Reid Miles did things with layout, typeface, and Wolff's photos that were every bit as innovative as the music.

Directed by Julian Benedikt, the film concentrates on the label's glory days, the '40s, '50s, and early '60s. (Lion and Wolff sold the company, which is still in operation, in 1965.) There's a wealth of archival footage - much of it jaw-droppingly good - from a wide range of sources, as well as numerous interviews with Blue Note artists and fans. An unexpected treat for jazz cognoscenti is getting to see Lorraine Gordon, Lion's first wife and the proprietor of the Village Vanguard, pick up a phone during an interview and take a reservation for that night's show.

After a fairly chronological start, Benedikt takes an impressionistic approach, which may make the documentary hard going for the uninitiated. Conversely, devotees will be dismayed by the amount of time spent on fans (Kareem Abdu --JazzReview.com, June 2008, Glenn Astarita



The performances are, predictably, wonderful: Besides vintage performance footage (again, mostly from Europe), there is also quite a bit from a 1985 celebration of Blue Note featuring Freddie Hubbard and others-good stuff. --Mix, Blair's DVD Watch, July 2008



This artwork and selected concert footage is used intelligently and appropriately, making Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz an enjoyable and informative documentary on jazz. --allaboutjazz.com, Micheal C. Bailey

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In the case of Art Blakey, the name "jazz legend" is wholly appropriate. Born in 1919, Blakey served his musical apprenticeship in the bands of Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie where his reputation as a drummer grew. The Jazz Messengers were formed in

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A Broadway choreographer chain-smokes, pops pills and overworks his way to open-heart surgery. Directed by Bob Fosse.

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In 1950s Manhattan, a dingy, five-story wreck of a loft building becomes the home and obsession of the brilliant photographer W. Eugene Smith who leaves his family and moves there to live the artist s life. Smith, crashing after a stellar but frustrating career at LIFE Magazine, wires the building for sound and captures daily life at 821 Sixth Avenue in thousands of pictures and end- less hours of audio tape. Over eight years in this place in New York s wholesale flower district, jazz players gather all night, every night, for freewheeling jam sessions both hot and cool; Thelonious Monk comes by to rehearse for a famous concert; Hall Overton emerges as a jazz guru; and a gifted drummer named Ronnie Free finds and loses his footing in the jazz world. Smith stealthily documents all that and more.



Special Features: Director Sara Fishko in conversation with Leonard Lopate | Trailer

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Ken Burns Country Music DVD

Ken Burns Jazz DVD



Region 1 (US and Canada)

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KIRK WHALUM - CHAPTER IV: GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JAZZ - DVD

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In 1955, as the Soviet Union's pervasive propaganda about the U.S. and American racism spread globally, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. convinced President Eisenhower that jazz was the best way to intervene in the Cold War cultural conflict. For the next decade, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Dave Brubeck traveled the globe to perform as cultural ambassadors.

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Renowned jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli shares his take on the key elements of jazz guitar style. Filled with dazzling demos, insightful lessons and great anecdotes, this DVD is perfect for newcomers looking to get their feet wet, or for experienced jazzers. Filmed in hi-def with onscreen music for many of the examples. 1 hour, 28 minutes.

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This video lesson focuses on teaching a variety of great swing and bop tunes and the techniques needed to play them. All of the songs are well-known standards, and these arrangements demonstrate various ways to approach this material for solo fingerstyle guitar. Includes: Summertime, Take the A Train, Liza, Stompin' At the Savoy, plus 2 more. Includes a 24 page tab/music booklet.

Review

This is a remarkable trilogy of videos from Duck Baker on the art of fingerstyle jazz guitar. Melody Maker describes Baker as: 'the kind of guy you instinctively feel should be internationally declared as some kind of innovator's master, not only for his sheer technique as an indisputable guitar virtuoso, but for his free-ranging spirit.' The origins of that opinion are clearly evident in these videos, as Baker brings his magnificent guitar work and expansive knowledge of guitar to life. More important than that virtuosity, however, is his ability to teach and explain his arrangements and ideas. Produced by Stefan Grossman, music and tab for the tunes is included withthe split-screen-filmed video which allows for simultaneous up-close viewing of left and right hand movements. I highly recommend these to intermediate level players. There is something very special about Baker that pervades all of his work. Some artists are truly exquisite musicians who inspire, but they also intimidate other players. Baker takes a tune like Take the A Train and convinces you that it was a guitar tune arranged for a big band. Here is someone whose work is genuinely inspiring and he presents it in a manner that puts it just within your reach -- if you want to work at it." --Sing Out!

About the Actor

Duck Baker was born Richard R. Baker IV in Washington, DC in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. His teenage years were devoted to playing the rock and blues bands before becoming interested in fingerpicking in local coffeehouses. Ragtime pianist Buck Evans was a major influence on Baker's developing interests, which by the time he moved to San Francisco in 1973 included rags, blues, old-time country, Cajun, bluegrass and New Orleans jazz. This variety inspired the title of his first solo record, "There's Something for Everyone in America," in 1976. During the next four years, Baker recorded four more solo records, including one devoted to swing, one to modern jazz and one to Irish and Scottish tunes, and appeared on nine others. He also wrote a book of fiddle tune arrangements and toured incessantly throughout America, Canada, Europe and Australia. He changed address almost as constantly, finally winding up in Europe for most of the '80s. He returned to San Francisco in 1987 and finally to Virginia in 1991. Most of his more recent solo recordings have featured his own compositions, an aspect of his work that has drawn particular praise from other guitarists. If Baker's insistence on studying and performing so many facets of folk and related music, from medieval European carols to avant-garde jazz, have made him somewhat difficult for the press to categorize, he certainly has earned the respect of his peers. A check list of musicians with whom he has been associated professionally (in performance or on records) would include blues man Charlie Musselwhite and Jerry Ricks, bluegrassers Tim O'Brien and Dan Crary, traditionalists Ali Anderson and Brian MacNeil, new music icon John Zron, rock legend J. J. Cale, and jug band king Jim Kweskin. Duck Baker has been a seminal figure and influence in the bringing of Irish traditional music to the guitar. Baker is one of those rare musicians who doesn't draw upon the repertoire of his chosen instrument for musical raw material, but rather finds ideas in the broader musical stream, and shapes them to the sensibilities of the guitar. From the application of that talent comes his acknowledged success at translating Irish fiddle, pipe, and harp music for the guitar. His memorable but not widely distributed 1980 album Kid on the Mountain outlined a stylistic approach that eschews any cosmetic prettiness of tone, and focuses rather upon the possibilities of stark, open harmonies and complex interwoven bass lines. That album first introduced to many guitarists in America viable arrangements of some essential Irish tunes, a few of which include "The Blarney Pilgrim," "Morgan Magan" and "The Duke of Fife's Welcome to Deeside." Though that album is long out of print, many of the landmark arrangements found there have been reissued on various CD collections.