Jazz on a Summer Day

If you're feeling a little down and out, I recommend that you watch Bert Stern's 1960 documentary Jazz on a Summer Day, a chronicle of the scene and some of the performances featured at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958.  The picture is charming in a low-key way and guaranteed, I think, to cheer you up.  Jazz is a cool medium and the movie isn't grandiose, nor does it really strain for effects -- there's no narration:  the images and soundtrack speak for themselves.  Stern was a fashion photographer and the movie's cinematography is casually elegant; the editing is sharp and the soundtrack clear.  The sea-side location for the festival is beautiful and the weather was sunny and clear.  The audience is well-mannered and very upscale -- most of the men wear suit and tie and many of the women are adorned with spectacular pearls and there are many brilliant, feathered hats on display.    

Stern starts his film at dawn with carefully composed images og boats docked in the harbor.  Jimmy Giuffre and his combo are playing some kind of very chilly and cerebral music.  Stern's camera dips down to the water where the reflections of the boats and flags and masts in the rippling fluid create austere and beautiful abstract patterns.  Beyond the harbor, there are qualifying trials for the America's Cup, a sailboat race, and huge yachts are floating on the sea with people on deck watching gorgeous-looking sailboats surging forward on the wind.  (For the first half of the film, images of the sailboat races are intercut with Jazz performances -- some critics have complained that this distracts from the music, but I think the effect, rather highlights, in music video form, some of the jazz played in this part of the movie.  I know that admirers of Thelonius Monk feel that he is disrespected by the documentary -- his performance of a signature tune, "Blue Monk", is illustrated by the World Cup sailors and their pretty sailboats and, even, an announcer who talks over the tune to provide information about the sailboat race and wind  conditions at sea.)  Interpolated among the performances are clips of an open convertible full of musicians playing Dixieland numbers -- these performers are shown driving through town, playing at a carnival nearby, and, then, performing on s playground for small children at the sea-side.  Later, we see them driving away into the dawn as the film ends, music still ringing out as the convertible speeds away.  

In mid-afternoon, Anita O'Day performs.  She's dressed in a skirt so tight that she seems hobbled while climbing the steps to the stage.  She sings a heavily skat version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" and flashes her long horse-sized teeth at the audience.  When she's done with her set, she tries to bow but the dress is too tight.  There's an exuberant house party somewhere in town with kids drinking beer (Rheingold) and dancing on a roof-top.  Some musicians are rehearsing in a hot upper room -- they're sweaty and some of the men have taken off their shirts.  One of the musicians plays a Bach passacaglia on his cello, stopping for a moment to light up a cigarette.  The sailing ships come back into the harbor and the sun seems about to set.  In the early evening, the George Shearing quintet performs some sort of Afro-Cuban jazz with a conga player working very hard (his brown is sweaty) and someone playing a marimba.  Much of the jazz has a cool analytical, almost abstract, quality.  Dinah Washington performs "All of Me" -- she has a big pink bow at her waist and the camera broods on it.  The critic, Richard Brody claims that the camera's focus on this somewhat vaginal adornment is "obscene"-- I agree, but the emphasis is reasonable:  she's singing a raucous, sexually inflected song that concludes with the line:  "Come and get the rest of me!" -- an invitation that makes the pink bow wiggle in an enticing way.  (There's a moment when a trombone player intrudes on the song in a way that makes Washington look a little puzzled, even startled -- the performances are often filmed in very close shot using a telephoto lens and we can see the musicians sometimes signaling to one another.)  After dark, a woman named Big Maybelle, dressed in what looks like a white wedding dress, takes the stage and performs some blues -- she's a blues' shouter, not a style that I particularly admire, but her performance is intense.  Chuck Berry inexplicably appears, his gig rendered even more bizarre by the fact that he is working with a back-up band comprised of Duke Ellington side-men.  These musicians seem to be utterly baffled and look on with bemusement as Berry hops around the stage; he duck-walks at one point across the platform.  There's very little light in the audience at this stage.  People  are smoking cigarettes and some of the footage looks like the most glamorous cigarette ad ever filmed.  Some people dance in dramatic swaths of light.  The crowd looks like a bunch of well-heeled WASPS from an A.B. Gurney play with a few intellectual-looking Black people interspersed here and there.   Someone called Chico Hamilton appears as part of a quintet.  There's an elaborate drum riff repeated over and over -- it has a Caribbean flavor and is played on something like bongo drums.  This drummer looks like a scientist bending over a particularly difficult and dangerous experiment but the close-up is framed wrong -- we can't see whatever elaborate and complex motions he is making to keep the riff going.  Louis Armstrong follows after some stage patter with the impresario.  Armstong may have lost a couple steps on his cornet but his singing is rich and gorgeous -- we're reminded of what a consummate singer he was and here his gravelly voice sounds particularly resonant and beautiful.  By this time, the stage is bathed in blood-red light.  Armstrong performs a vocal duet with his old side-man, trombonist Jack Teagarden, and the music is  extraordinarily intimate and tender, perhaps, the best representation of friendship that I have ever seen portrayed in music -- the song, of course, is "Ole Rockin' Chair's got me" This is the highlight of the film and it is tremendously moving.  Armstrong ends with a version of "When the Saints go Marching In" -- as he plays his cornet, he rolls his eyes upward as if sighting the highnotes, aiming for them, somewhere in the constellations above.  The show ends with Mahalia Jackson singing a gospel tune and, then, ending with a reverent version of "The Lord's Prayer".  When she claps her hands on the uptempo numbers, it's like a drum rimshot or a rifle being fired.  Her throaty and sinuous phrasing of "Thy will be done" is spectacular, although I think the song is overly devotional for the setting.  A brief shot depicts the sun rising -- it's supposed to be dawn, although I would guess Mahalia Jackson finished her gig long before that time.  (It is after midnight when she takes the stage, "Sunday", the announcer notes and, thus, appropriately the time for the "world's greatest gospel singer" to perform.)  A couple of shots show the Dixieland band in the convertible, looking a little bedraggled but, nonetheless, still playing as the sun rises.

It's an elegant and charming picture, appealing in all respects.  The film's technique is pioneering andwas used in later concert movies, most notably the use of multiple cameras and close-ups in tight telephoto focus in Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock.