Cinema Sings the Blues

Abstract

Parallels between film and jazz are numerous. Both, ironically four-letter words, were born and nurtured on the fringes of proper society during the decades following the turn of the century. Both, after torturous childhoods battling charges of illegitimacy, finally found respectability among Presidential recognitions and college curricula. And both, according to today's prophesizing pundits, are destined to vault proudly into the future as America's prime contributions to twentieth-century art. Other parallels stem from each medium's technical base. At first dependent on physical/mechanical means of production, each has faced major confrontations with increasingly expanded and sophisticated webs of electronic technology. For film, the double jolts of synchronized sound and television forced radical rewirings of the medium's aesthetic and economic premises. For jazz, the impact of radio and successive waves of new recording modes had similar impact. Today, and tomorrow, film is squaring off with lasers, cassettes and discs; jazz, in the meantime, is attempting to incorporate synthesizers, modulators and multi-track recorders. While film and jazz have traveled along parallel tracks, essentially, their courses have been separate. However, there are intersections where the two have met head on. These junctures are the focus of this essay which is only intended as a provisional map for future expeditions. Film and jazz first met in the darkened, smoke-filled chambers of Bijou Dreams during the first decade of this century.1 Sitting beneath cataracts of flickering images, pianists ragged and riffed through the pop and standard tunes of the day. Sometimes their efforts helped underscore the drama. Mostly, however, their improvised medleys served to fill up the aural void and cover up the wisecracks and whirs from the projector.2 As the need for supportive musical backgrounds became more apparent, ragtime passages came to be reserved for nightclub and party scenes. In recognition of this ability to indicate time, place and situation, silent film mentor Erno Rapee included sixty-two Rags in his comprehensive handbook, Encyclopedia of Music for Pictures.3 After the hardships of World War I, Americans wanted to kick up their heels and dance on into the night. As often as not, what they turned to was jazz. In particular, they sought the kind of musical exuberance found in the

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.