Jazz Videos

Jazz on video has never been a particularly high-profile area of the entertainment world. For one thing, the amount of available material varies widely. There is, for example, a minimal amount of Charlie Parker footage and, obviously, a huge array of Louis Armstrong films.

Further, there are documentaries that sometimes are more accurate reflections of the views of the filmmaker than the lives of subjects. The fact that some footage is live, recorded in club or concert settings, doesn’t guarantee that it is a particularly memorable performance.

All that said, there nonetheless is a substantial amount of compelling jazz on video. Since it arrives in dribs and drabs, since it sometimes migrates from one distributor to another, and since release dates have far less significance than they do in the record business, here is a selection of some of the most attractive items--some new, some not so new, but all worthy subjects for any leftover holiday gift budgets.

“A Great Day in Harlem” (**** BWE Video) is filmmaker Jean Bach’s remarkable documentary about an amazing occasion: a day in 1958 when photographer Art Kane gathered together more than 50 of the finest jazz musicians in the world for a group photograph. Cobbling together home movies of the occasion with other photographs and current interviews with some participants, Bach created an insightful view of the personal, inside world of the jazz musician. This new edition of the film includes a bonus item, “The Spitball Story With Dizzy Gillespie,” in which the trumpeter relates a wildly humorous event that took place when he was playing in Cab Calloway’s Band.

“Triumph of the Underdog” (**** Shanachie) is filmmaker Don McGlynn’s comprehensive, often painful perspective on the complex life of bassist-composer Charles Mingus. Too brief, even at 78 minutes, to encompass the full range of Mingus’ character, it nonetheless is a rare document, a vital entry in any jazz fan’s video collection.

“Rahsaan Roland Kirk: The One Man Twins” (**** Rhino). Kirk was one of the great marvels of contemporary jazz, capable of playing--with enormous impact--two, and sometimes three, saxophones at the same time. Impressive as this feat sounded on his recordings, it was an astonishing visual sight. This collection, filmed during Kirk’s 1972 appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, three years before he was hit by a paralyzing stroke, provides a first-rate look at the multi-instrumentalist--one of the few true shamans produced by jazz--in action.

“Tenor Legends: Coleman Hawkins and Dexter Gordon” (*** Shanachie). A pair of programs featuring Hawkins, still in rare form in 1962, recorded in a Brussels film studio with a rhythm section that included French pianist George Arvanitas. The Gordon footage, also from Europe, was shot at one of his favorite venues, Copenhagen’s Montmarte in 1969. Gordon works with the particularly fine, international rhythm section of Kenny Drew on piano, Niels Henning Orstad Pedersen on bass and Makaya Ntoshoko on drums.

“Robert Altman’s Jazz ‘34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing” (**** Rhapsody Films). While Altman, a jazz fan of the first order, was producing his dramatic film “Kansas City,” he shot additional footage of the superb lineup of young musicians who were portraying famous jazz artists of the period. Among the players: Christian McBride, Ron Carter, Russell Malone, Cyrus Chestnut, Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, Craig Handy, James Carter and others--an all-star assemblage of ‘90s young lions. Because Altman insisted on filming the jam sessions live, with multiple cameras and microphones, the visual images have an electrifying quality, an almost eerie sense of what it must have been like to actually experience Kansas City jazz in the city’s booming ‘30s.

“Great Guitars: Herb Ellis, Charlie Byrd and Barney Kessel” (*** Shanachie). A guitar supergroup in which each of these veteran artists displays his individual style: Ellis’ blues-soaked lines, Byrd’s Latin tinge and Kessel’s bop-till-you-drop lines.

“Jazz Dance/After Hours” (*** Rhapsody Films) includes two classic, early jazz films. The former, “Jazz Dance,” filmed in 1954 in black and white, showcases a traditional ensemble (with, among others, Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy McPartland and Willie “The Lion” Smith) playing for dancers at the Central Park Dance Hall in Manhattan. The latter, “After Hours,” also in black and white, dates to a 1961 staged jam session featuring Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Milt Hinton and others in a warmly expressive set of swing tunes (including Hawkins’ lovely rendering of “Lover Man”).

“Gypsy Guitar: The Legacy of Django Reinhardt” (*** Shanachie) explores the legendary guitarist’s influence, primarily on European players. Among the spotlighted performers are his son, Babik Reinhardt, Bireli Lagrene, the Gypsy Kids and the Rosenberg Trio. There also is a rare film clip of Reinhardt in performance.

“Miles & Quincy: Live at Montreux” (*** Warner Reprise Video) includes, in very small print, the subtitle “Playing the classic arrangements of Gil Evans.” But the concert, which took place in the summer of 1991, less than three months before Davis’ death, uses trumpeter Wallace Roney to play many of the familiar Davis lines. Still, as a chronicle of one of Davis’ final appearances--and an appearance featuring the music that many of his fans remember most fondly--it is a valuable and somewhat poignant document.

“Les McCann & Eddie Harris: Swiss Movement” (*** Rhino). The genesis of one of the great jazz hits--”Compared to What”--took place at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969, and it’s all here. The Les McCann Trio, supplemented almost at the last minute by tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris and trumpeter Benny Bailey, came up with the classic, extended item in an exuberant session. And it’s clear, from the sheer spontaneity of the performance, that none of the performers could ever imagined that what they were doing would wind up on the pop music charts a few months later. A fascinating jazz pictorial.