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Prior to the Jazz singer, there were already several sound shorts, and it did not have the honor of being the first one hundred percent sound film, such a privilege corresponds to "The light of New York", a 1928 film directed by Bryan Foy that stands out for being the first feature film with 100% sound dialogues in the history of cinema. The film itself does not stand out for having great artistic interest, but the merely historical as a technological landmark.

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Similarly, Alan Crosland's film cannot be considered the first collaboration of both arts. The paths of Jazz and cinema have crossed each other throughout their history from the very beginning of their lives. At the end of the decade of the 10s of the 20th century, with both disciplines just born, jazz was already used as accompaniment music in the projection rooms; Some of the best musicians of the moment, Scott Joplin, Count Basie or Louis Armstrong himself played in them, combining his professional career between jazz clubs with movie theaters. But to God what is of God and to Cesar what is of Cesar was the first film that propelled the implantation of sound thanks to its enormous success.

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Aside from the sound, the film has as an incentive to offer several musical interpretations of the one who was the biggest Broadway star of the moment Al Jhonson, in this way the character of Jazz musician reaches his greatest justification with sound cinema, opening the doors to one of the most archetypal figures in American cinematography.

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Al Jolson sings in it several songs "Mammy", "Toot, toot, tootsie, goodbye", "Dirty hands, dirty face", "Blue Skies", "Mother, I still have you", etc ... becoming a star of the seventh Art.

 

This film was followed by many others that also had Jazz music as their central axis, but which was also joined by blues and dance music, among which we highlight Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929) or King of Jazz (John Murray Anderson , 1930) , reason why musical cinema became the predominant genre of sound cinema.

 

Separate mention deserve the cartoons and the almighty Disney. The character of Jazz musician was also seen in the pieces that were made by the cartoonists of Walt Disney or the Fleischer brothers. How to forget the Silly Simphonies, where Music Land (Wilfred Jackson, 1935) and Woodland café (Wilfred Jackson, 1937) stand out, which were a tribute to the Cotton Club of Duke Ellingthon.

All these silly symphonies are going to be the first to reflect one of the first conflicts, the one between Jazz and classical music.

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But if something has remained in our retinas it is Betty Boop, one of the great icons of the 20th century. In the first short film of the most famous vamp in the world, swing appears, a jazz style that originated in the late 1920s in the United States and that brought several novelties: polyrhythm, succession of different rhythms, greater freedom of instruments, but Above all, it is not simply a type of music, but a way of playing that leads those who listen to it to dance.

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In any case, in the thirties and forties the cinema of the studios only used jazz in a very accessory way, the music continued to take refuge in the clubs and radio stations from where it was broadcast to all corners of the United States.

 

 

What was usual at this time? Could you talk about authentic black music? The relationship between Jazz and cinema was a rather interested relationship, than one of true collaboration. The musicals had a profile closer to the songs of the Broadway musical than to the Jazz, and although some stylistic elements of black music appeared, they were always filed down to the taste of the white spectator -as Joan Pons says in his book "The Musical Cinema USA ”(2015) -.

 

 

The normal thing was the sporadic collaborations of the stars of the Jazz in colorful comedies or gangster films. As a result of that collaboration, the best black musical in the history of cinema “Stormy Weather” (Stone, 1943) emerged, with Fast Waller, Lena Horne and Cab Callaway.

 

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The film is based on the life of the dancer Bill “Bonjangles” Robinson, who, along with his brother also a tap dancer, participated in the film. From this film I would highlight the great Lena Horne. He had to live an intermediate time, the transition between jazz as mere entertainment for whites and jazz as mass art. Her beginnings were as a cheerleader for the cotton club nightclubs in Harlem and in jazz orchestras for whites (Charlie Barnet and Artie Shaw). Her soft and velvety voice and her “café con leche” skin tone, which would earn her the nickname “Hedy Lamarr café con leche”, allowed her to jump on Broadway. His flagship song “Stormy Weather (1941), a true jazz classic, was the precedent for the filming of the eponymous film.

 

After World War II the paths of Jazz and cinema diverge, if they were ever parallel. Hollywood, after its golden years, begins its decline while Jazz entered into a glorious renewal, beginning as an autonomous art away from entertainment channels.

The swing had been squeezed to satiety, the same musical forms were repeated despite efforts to find a new sound. It was in 1940 in Harlem, of course, where a club on 118th Street called Minton's Playhouse run by a certain Teddy Hill, who had the genius of opening at odd hours getting night after night to gather jazz musicians from the city who released The rules of their respective bands played endless "jam sessions". The result is a new sound: dissonant themes with melodies full of sudden jumps and a totally different concept from melodic aesthetics. In a word, Bebop.

Among these musicians were Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian, Bud Powell or Kenny Clarke.
When Charlie Parker was asked about the meaning of Bebop, he said it had occurred to them because that word sounded just like a policeman's baton on a black man's skull. Ironies aside, the important thing is that the foundations of modern Jazz were laid.

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These new airs were picked up by some film directors. Franz Waxman, Alex North or Elmer Bemstein included jazz in the soundtrack of films like "The indiscreet window" or "A streetcar called desire". It is precisely the soundtrack of "A streetcar called desire" (Elia Kazan, 1951) where the first score that introduces Jazz into film music appears.

Alex North was born in Pennsylvania in 1910, from his adolescence he was fond of jazz being a great follower of Duke Ellington, his musical training was completed in Russia so his influences covered both Ellington and Prokofiev. When he returned to his country he composed various pieces for the theater and it is there that he meets Elia Kazan who entrusts him with the music for his staging “Death of a Salesman”. When Kazan made the leap to Hollywood, he took Alex North debuting as a film composer with "A Streetcar Named Desire." Even so, North demystified the innovative character of his score, for the composer jazz served to reflect the oppressive and suffocating atmosphere of New Orleans far from the improvisational freedom that authentic jazz has, apart from that not all the score is jazz we can find more traditional orchestral pieces such as those used to illustrate the relationship between the characters of Karl Maldem and Vivien Leigh.

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Be that as it may, jazz as a dramatic and not merely ambient element had entered film music thanks to Alex North.

When does jazz have its place in the cinema? Florence (Jeanne Moreau), wandering the streets of Paris, is full of sadness, looks into the bars, but he, her lover, is nowhere to be found. The mute of Miles Davis, accompanies his lost steps and accentuates the continuous despair on his face. Indeed this wonderful scene belongs to "Elevator for the scaffold" (1958), the first work of Louis Malle, owner of one of the best jazz soundtracks of all time, performed in a totally improvised way during a single eight-hour session long, Boris Vian said: “The musicians - Miles Davis and René Urtreger's quartet - totally relaxed, saw the main scenes of the film pass on the screen, and thus situated in the environment, they began to improvise as it happened the projection ”. On the end, Vian says: "There is no doubt that the listener, even deprived of the images, will be sensitive to the bewitching and tragic climate created by the great black musician ...".

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Jazz, despite being the most important music in the United States in the 20th century, had to go through the city of light to be considered as more than just black music. It was Europe that first gave jazz music its place in the cinema. Jazz mania in France was notable in the 1950s. Roger Vadim turned to Modern Jazz for the soundtrack of "Saint-on Jamais" (1957), and two years later Vadim returns but with the great pianist and bebop founder Theloniou Monk for "The Dangerous Relationships" (1959), where the North American pianist Duke Jordan also participated, and as a secondary actor, Boris Vian, who besides being a poet and novelist, was a jazz musician. For his part, Edouard Molinaro for "Des femme disparaissent" (1959), had his soundtrack performed by the Jazz Messengers quintet with Art Blakey on drums ... etc, etc ... the important thing is that the film industry in the years Sixties, he ended up assuming jazz music as an essential element in the cinema, and that composers from jazz such as Mancini, Johnny Mandel, Lalo Shifrin, Quincy Jones or Dave Grusin, professionalized in the composition of music for cinema.

France, in general, and especially Paris, were a sort of refuge for jazz musicians. Black Americans who arrived in Paris before 1964 - when the Civil Rights Act abolished segregation laws in their country - were surprised by the lack of discriminatory rules in France. Those infamous laws, which governed many states in the southern United States, restricted the rights of the descendants of former slaves freed after the Civil War (1861-1865) in the areas of transportation, education, and housing, among other aspects. In Paris, on the other hand, blacks could manage jazz clubs and attend them like whites, something unthinkable in the United States.

The cinema of the 60s - 70s is no stranger to this situation and we find films like “Paris Blues” (1961) where there is open talk about the acceptance in Paris of “black people”, when in North America they are segregated. The African American musicians who visited the city of light were amazed at the love and friendship they received.

 

The Paris Blue soundtrack was by Duke Ellington. Louis Armstrong and jazz pianist Aaron Bridgers accompany the stars of the film: Paul Newman, in the role of a trombonist and Sidney Poitier who plays the sax in the band. ”

 

The Twilight of a Star (Lady sings the blues-1972), directed by Sidney J. Furie, which was about the most famous blues singer, Billie Holiday. Holiday's life was hard, tragic, exciting; No one like her could sing Strange Fruit, that protest composition that talks about the murdered blacks, hanging from the trees as if they were fruits that the animals later eat. You had to have the courage to sing it, she was the first star to do it.

 

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Diane Ross, that great singer who emerged in the 1960s as a member of the group The Supremes, gave life to Billie Holiday in the film. The great Billie Holiday, I only act once in the cinema specifically in the movie "New Orleans" (1947), a film by Arthur Lubin, where Louis Armstrong makes a presentation of the musicians: Kid Dry on trombone, Zutty Singleton on drums , clarinetist Barney Bigard, Bud Scott on guitar and pianist Charlie Beal, as conductor Woody Herman.

 

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But if there are two composers who have brought Jazz to the cinema in an outstanding way, they are: Quincy Jones and Henry Mancini.

Quincy Jones, the magnificent composer and arranger, who was a trumpeter of monsters like Gillespie, and a great friend of Ray Charles, is one of the men who has produced the most for soundtracks for movies and television series. Unforgettable his work for Norman Jewinson's "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), Richard Brooks' "In Cold Blood" is also from that year. Sam Peckinpah's "The Fugue" (1972), and "The Color Purple ”(1985) by Spielberg, are his best works.

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Henry Mancini, composer, pianist and arranger, like Quincy have produced a great production for the cinema. His first opportunity was for the Orson Welles film "Thirst for Evil" (1957), which was his consecration for the exceptional rhythm, especially in the sequence shot that begins the film. His definitive consecration with "The Pink Panther" by Blake Edwards. His fourth collaboration for this director was for "Blackmail Against a Woman" (1962), accompanied by the rhythm of jazz we see in the beginning Lee Remick driving an open car on a highway in San Francisco. It is night and the city lights are stuck in the background. It is extraordinary how the music in this movie acts as a plot resource. In 1982, together with the writer and musician Paul Bowles, they compose the music for a new version of "The Crystal Zoo", directed by Paul Newman.

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In short, Jazz and Cinema reconciled again thanks to great directors who not only loved cinema but also Jazz in equal parts and who deserve to be written about separately in later issues of our magazine: Bertrand Tavernier with the magnificent production "Round Midnight, (1986) or Clint Eastwood with his marvelous" Bird "(1988), Francis Ford Coppola with" Cotton Club "(1984) or closer Robert Altman with" Kansas city "(1996) and Woody Allen with "Chords and Disagreements" (1999).

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In Spain, it has been the extraordinary filmmaker, Fernando Trueba, who has opted for that magical relationship between Jazz and Cinema, shooting and premiering in 2000, the film "Calle 54", an exceptional musical portrait of Latin jazz and its influence on jazz music today. More recently, two jazz legends, guitarist Pat Metheny and double bassist Charlie Haden, composed the music for the film “Living is easy with eyes closed” (2013), written and directed by David Trueba, and where Pat Metheny took the Goya for the best original music.

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All to a greater or lesser extent restored prestige and rigor to that difficult but beautiful relationship between cinema and jazz.