Jazz in Film

Music has always played an important role in the film industry, and jazz is no exception by any stretch of imagination, beginning with the first talking movie in 1927 The Jazz Singer, to New Orleans in 1947 with Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, to Alex North’s first full score jazz-orientated movie, A Streetcar Named Desire in 1953 to the most recent The United States vs Billie Holiday, Bolden, Django, and Ma Rainey’s Bell Bottom Blues. Jazz music’s often superior sounds greatly help in creating atmosphere with tension, excitement, pathos, joy, and anticipation to advance the plot to exciting possibilities. Below are some of this reviewer’s favorite essential soundtracks for jazz in the cinema:

1) The Wild Ones (1958) – Leith Stevens

(2) Anatomy For Murder (1959) – Duke Ellington

(3) The Subterraneans (1960) – Andre Previn

(4) I Want To Live (1958) – Johnny Mandel & Gerry Mulligan

(5) Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – Chico Hamilton

(6) Ascenseur pour l’echafaud (1959) – Miles Davis

(7) Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) – The modern Jazz Quartet (John Lewis)

(8) Bridges Over Madison County (1997) – Lennie Neuhaus (Clint Eastwood)

Sweet and Lowdown (1998) – Dick Hyman and Howard Alden (Woody Allen)

(10) Round Midnight (1986) – Herbie Hancock (C. Eastwood)

Ten Essential Biopics

(1) Bird (1988) – Lennie Niehaus (Eastwood)

(2) Django (2017) – The Rosenberg Brothers

(3) Bolden (2019) – Wynton Marsalis

(4) Gene Krupa (1959)

(5) Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

(6) Miles Ahead (2015?)

(7) The Benny Goodman Story (1956)

(8) Born To Be Blue (2015) – David Braid

(9) Young Man With A Horn (1958)

(10) The Green Book (2019)