England / USA,
1987, 78 min
Shown in 1988
CREDITS
- dir
-
Dick Fontaine
- prod
-
Pat Hartley, Dick Fontaine
- source
-
Central Television
- gga award
-
Honorable Mention, Television: Fine Arts and Musical Variety
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
OTHER
"This is the music of my culture. Good, bad, or indifferent, it's the only culture America has brought forth." So speaks veteran jazz drummer Art Blakey who has done more than most over the past 40 years to keep that culture alive. Born in Pittsburgh in 1919, Blakey began to play music to avoid a life in the mines, starting his career in Fletcher Henderson's big swing band before becoming part of the Billy Eckstine group and the beginnings of bebop. It was here he met and worked with jazz greats Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Charlie Mingus and Billie Holiday. Blakey’s story is told through conversations with some of his most important collaborators, such as Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter and jazz drummer Roy Haynes; the film features archival footage from the ’40s of Gillespie, Monk and Eckstine. As well as capturing the essence of jazz in New York as players old and new discuss their experiences and memories, this film focuses on Blakey's visit to England where he is seen working and performing with many talented young Black musicians who have begun to storm the barricades of the established jazz scene. Blakey says that after the 1950s, Blacks grew to know less and less about jazz and he sees it as part of his mission to bring the music back to the people who invented it and to reaffirm its roots so that " in 50 years' time Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington aren't white!
FACTOID #80
Irving ’Bud’ Levin, owner of San Francisco’s Metro Theatre, founded the SFIFF in 1957. However, Levin credited the idea for creating the Festival to the Italian consul general at the time, Pierluigi Alvera, who became one of its staunchest supporters.
