“I think cinema is the art form closest to music...”
Terence Davies
1.
Round Midnight, Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 movie, is about a jazz musician who plays in the genre known as bebop. Critics oriented toward traditional jazz often deplore bebop as formless, an effusion of musical emotion not structured according to obvious harmonic and rhythmic structures. Louis Armstrong, the most influential traditional jazz player, didn’t like the new form and accused its players of hitting “weird notes” and making incomprehensible “Chinese music.” You can’t dance to most bebop – the music is played too fast and is too unpredictable. Therefore, audiences acclimated to Swing and Dixieland rejected the form as illegibly avant-garde. In some respects, the cultural correlate to bebop is abstract expressionism, gestural field paintings of artists like Jackson Pollock, that is art ordered according to a different paradigm than conventional figurative representation.
It’s no surprise that Tavernier’s film about a bebop jazz man has been accused of being formless, non-narrative, essentially a concert movie in which the music isn’t particularly good. (Gary Giddins says Dexter Gordon’s playing is uninspired and he has “intonation” problems – Giddins would know: he wrote the Weather Bird jazz column for the Village Voice for thirty years.) More charitably, the film is described as a “mood piece”. As with the bebop music that inspires the picture, the movie is about the expression of a certain sensibility, a manner of being, the “cool” demeanor of the musician contrasted with the raw emotions expressed in his music.
2.
No one knows for sure why the sort of music played in ‘Round Midnight is called “bebop.” The etymology of the word is unclear, although some have suggested that the term derives from “scat singing”, vocal improvisation in which the musician sings nonsense syllables, often at great velocity, on the musical tones that he or she produces. Bebop seems to have been invented by Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker, both tenor sax players, between 1939 and the mid-forties. Parker’s 1942 performance of “Cherokee” is said to be seminal, a founding document as it were in the genre. In early accounts of the music, it is called “rebop” or “bebop” – the “rebop” term may be derived from Latin conductors shouting out Arriba, arriba! at their bands.
Dexter Gordon (1923 - 1990) who plays the protagonist Dale Taylor in the picture was a prominent bebop artist who released a series of important albums beginning around 1943. Gordon, who came from a prominent African-American family in Los Angeles (his father was a medical doctor), was educated at Howard University and played tenors sax in various big bands. By 1943, he was playing with Dizzy Gillespie and, later, released numerous records on the Savoy label in the late forties. He moved from the West Coast to New York where he lived from 1942 to 1962 when he moved to Europe. Between 1962 and 1976, Gordon lived in Europe mostly in Copenhagen and Paris. He returned to the United States in 1976 where he commuted between San Francisco and New York. At that time, he was signed to Columbia records and played a famous extended gig at the Village Vanguard in New York City.
Gordon’s health declined in the 80's and he retired from performing professionally. A chain-smoker, he suffered from emphysema and later larynx cancer. When recruited for ‘Round Midnight, he was living during the cold months in Cuernavaca, Mexico and hadn’t played for money for over two years. He was rusty and said that he didn’t have the “chops’ for which he was famous at the time the movie was shot. However, he practiced assiduously for the role and his recording of the eponymous (title) tune at the Davout studio is regarded as one of the highlights of his career. (We see the Thelonius Monk song performed in the movie.) Gordon told Tavernier that he would gradually get better as the movie progressed, that is, as he improved due to practice and jazz critics believe this is indisputably shown in the film.
Gordon was sometimes called “long tall Dexter”. He was a commanding presence, six foot six inches tall. Throughout his career, he played small parts in movies occasionally and had a working knowledge of the film industry – he was, after all, from LA. (He played a jazz musician waiting for his heroin fix in Shirley Clarke’s 1961 quasi-documentary The Connection.) Gordon was very well-educated and had an eclectic interest in music – he is said to have incorporated motifs from Wagner operas into some of his songs and the affection he shows for Ravel and Debussy in the film was an aspect of Gordon’s own esthetic. People recall him as suave, affable, and an amusing raconteur. The figure that he plays in the movie, the melancholy Dale Taylor is nothing like Dexter Gordon. There’s an element of racism to some interpretations of the film that regard Gordon as simply playing himself. In fact, he is acting throughout the movie and many of the mannerisms that he imparts to his character were Gordon’s own inventions. An argument can be made that Gordon is actually playing a variant on the mumbling rebellious outsiders that were a specialty of Marlon Brando. Brando seems to have recognized this when he sent a famous letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences praising Gordon’s performance when the actor was nominated for an Oscar in 1986. Brando said Gordon’s acting was the best performance in “the last fifteen years” in a movie.
3.
It’s worth comparing Tavernier’s great film A Sunday in the Country (1984) with ‘Round Midnight made about two years later. In A Sunday in the Country, Tavernier focuses on an artist in the twilight of his career, a painter who rejected the innovations of his countrymen that led to Impressionism. The pathos in A Sunday in the Country relates to the protagonist’s sense that the mainstreams of art have marooned him, left him behind. ‘Round Midnight is set in 1959, at the end of the bebop period – Dale Taylor’s kind of music, which was never widely popular, is obsolete; his way of playing is on the verge of being replaced by “free jazz”, various West Coast styles, and, of course, the kind of jazz-fusion rock-inspired music later pioneered by Miles Davis and, to some degree, Herbie Hancock (who appears in a prominent role in the film). In fact, there were significant clashes, or, at least, disputes as to musical styles and taste, when the picture was shot. Herbie Hancock wrote “Chan’s song”, the tune dedicated to Dale Taylor’s daughter in the movie. Dexter Gordon didn’t think much of the song and was dismissive about it. Furthermore, he refused to play the song with the phrasing that Hancock suggested. This rankled Hancock although he was too gentlemanly and professional to disrupt the shooting of the film over this controversy. Gary Giddins recalls, however, that a year after the movie was released he saw Hancock at a jazz festival. Hancock insisted on sitting down at a piano and playing “Chan’s Song” for Giddins, noting that his version was the way the song was supposed to be played. Both A Sunday in the Country and ‘Round Midnight are about artists who have been acclaimed as great and who are exhausted, in the decline of their careers, and who fear that they may have run out of inspiration.
4.
Dexter Gordon told this story: when he was a kid, casting agents from Hollywood drove through the Black neighborhoods in LA recruiting children to play the part of African natives in Tarzan movies. Gordon was often passed-over. He was thought to be “too light” and not sufficiently Negroid to be plausible as the inhabitant of a Hollywood African village. The gig was fun for the kids and it paid a dollar or so and Gordon was unhappy about not being asked to perform as an extra in the Tarzan movies. He told his buddies that he would become an actor and win an Oscar – that would show them. And, in fact, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1986. He didn’t win but he got close. (Paul Newman took home the Oscar for his part in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.)
5.
Some of the mannerisms that Gordon uses as Dale Taylor are derived from his observations of Lester Young and Bud Powell. Lester Young used the appellation “lady” when addressing people – in the film, we hear Taylor use this form of address; for instance, he calls Ace “Lady Ace” in an early scene in the movie. Lester Young held his saxophone horizontally across his arms before and after performing – we see this gesture in the movie. Lester Young also had the habit of referring to himself in the third-person, something that Dexter Gordon would never have done. The anecdote about being put in the brig while serving in the military is derived from something that happened to Lester Young in 1944 – he was court-martialed and dishonorably discharged in 1945. At the end of the movie, there’s an odd shot showing an unmarked grave among tenement ruins. This refers to the fact that Bud Powell, Gordon’s contemporary, who died in 1966, is said to be buried in an unmarked grave.
The film is replete with allusions to the tragedy that befell Bud Powell. A pianist and composer of transcendent gifts, Powell was also mentally ill, possibly as a result of a brain injury that he sustained when a Philadelphia cop beat him senseless in January 1945. Powell was a drunk and was frequently hospitalized for erratic behavior – he spent 11 months at Creedmore Hospital in 1949. (Powell was said to be paranoid about racial persecution – but, as is said, you’re not paranoid if there are sinister forces actually out to get you.) The spectral Herschel who is dying at the Hotel Alvin in the first scene probably stands in for Powell. Like Edgar Alan Poe, Powell had no resistence to alcohol – one drink would put him into a catatonic state. (This is depicted in the film.)
Powell emigrated from the United States in 1959 – this was after several heroin busts and problems with drinking that led to electro-convulsive therapy (“shock” treatment). In Paris, he was befriended by Francis Paudras, a French jazz fan, who wrote a book about their relationship The Dance of the Infidels: the Life of Bud Powell. (The book titled after one of Powell’s musical compositions was published in 1986 in France and Tavernier credits the biography as one of the sources for the film.) It was France Paudras who encouraged Powell to leave his exploitative wife, “Buttercup” (Altevia Edwards) and move in with him. Prior to that time, Powell was living with “Buttercup” and her son at the Louisiane hotel, the Paris equivalent to the Chelsea Hotel – Sartre’s girlfriend (Juliette Greco) lived there as did Henry Miller and most American jazz men working in Paris; Quentin Tarantino stayed there when he was working on Inglourious Basterds. A mock-up of the hotel features prominently in the film.
Bud Powell returned to New York in 1963, immediately succumbed to addiction and mental illness, and died at 41 in 1966. Herbie Hancock said that Powell was a genius who applied the saxophone techniques of Charlie Parker to the piano – “he is the foundation of all modern jazz piano,” Hancock has declared. One of Powell’s signature works is his recording of ‘Round Midnight,” a composition written by Thelonious Monk. “‘Round Midnight” is featured in the film due to its connection with Bud Powell and based on the fact that the song was part of the Warner Brothers’ catalogue – the studio owned the song and didn’t have to pay for its rights.
Contrary to the film’s suggestion, thousands of people attended Bud Powell’s funeral in August 1966 at the Harlem church of St. Charles Borromeo at 142nd Street. You can see pictures on the internet of the funeral. A “jazz mobile” followed the cortege and musicians played “Dance of the Infidels” and “ ‘Round Midnight”. Although his grave seems to be unmarked, it’s not in the corner of a vacant lot in the ruins of the Bronx as shown by the film but at the Fairview Cemetery (a huge and historic African-American graveyard) near Germantown, Pennsylvania. (The trope of the great musician, ignored by his contemporary and buried in a pauper’s grave, originates with legends about Mozart’s funeral – no more true than the myth about Bud Powell’s obsequies.)
6.
Francis Paudras has a cameo in the film. He is one of the men shown seated at the bar in one of the scenes set at the Blue Note. Paudras thought that Tavernier didn’t pay sufficient attention to Dance of the Infidels, his book about his relationship with Bud Powell. Apparently, there were many clashes with him on the set and during the film’s production.
7.
Dexter Gordon was in Cuernavaca with his wife when his agent suggested that he do the film with Tavernier. Gordon was initially skeptical because the picture was produced by Irwin Winkler, the same man who had made the Rocky pictures with Sylvester Stallone.
Gordon liked Tavernier and the friendship was mutual. Tavernier was the sort of Frenchman with the endearing, if annoying, trait of thinking that American culture has to be defended from Americans. Gordon told Tavernier that he hadn’t played for two years and didn’t know about his lip. But he assured Tavernier: “I’ll get better by the end.”
Gordon was a little miffed that he had die in the movie. He said he wasn’t willing to die on-camera. Tavernier who is a highly intelligent and tactful film-maker said his death would off-camera.
“Why can’t we have a happy ending?” Gordon asked.
“Dexter, we are making a movie,” Tavernier said. “I am French. You must die.” Tavernier recalled that Gordon seemed “very, very old” – far older than his chronological age of 63. Tavernier said that he seemed “ancient” to him.
A couple days before his agents encouraged him to make the movie with Tavernier, Gordon reported a dream to his wife. In his dream, Ben Webster came into his bedroom. Ben Webster was a great sax player who had worked with Duke Ellington and spent the last years of his life in Copenhagen. (Webster died in 1973.). Webster taunted, Gordon: “Dexter, you can’t play any more.” Gordon’s feelings were hurt and he told his dead friend: “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”
8.
African-American jazz musicians had an unsavory reputation for heroin addiction and drunkenness. Tavernier, who was prey to worries that his cast would be absent due to substance abuse, banned alcohol from the set. This wasn’t a problem with his on-screen performers. But the ban led to a major problem with Tavernier’s French crew – the French drink wine with their lunch and they thought it was outrageous that Tavernier didn’t allow this.
Near the end of his life, Gary Giddins and Pete Hamill were interviewing Dexter Gordon. Gordon was courtly but seemed distracted. Every twenty minutes he would mysteriously excuse himself, vanish for a couple minutes, and, then, return to the table where the men were eating lunch.
During one absence, Hamill wondered out loud if Gordon was “using drugs.” Giddins followed Gordon during his next absence. Gordon went outside into the alley, removed a small transistor radio from his breast pocket, and held the radio to his ear. He was checking on the progress of a Yankees game.
9.
Tavernier begins the movie in a dark mood and shoots on an elaborate, if claustrophobic, set showing the Blue Note, the Hotel Louisiane, and the confined city streets around the Paris saloon. The set is brilliantly designed but dark. The sky over the narrow city streets is obviously painted. (The entire set was constructed in the studio inside and out.) Half of the film has been described with the oxymoron of “technicolor noir.” Later, the film brightens and many shots are made outdoors on-location as Dale Taylor seems to recover from his alcoholism. This part of the movie culminates in the sequence involving the recording of “‘Round Midnight” at Davout. Taylor, then, returns to New York City where the tone darkens again and the movie becomes more confined to the sinister Hotel Alvin – the place was at 52nd Street near the East River. Tavernier has said that he doesn’t like plots that develop in acts, that is, in a conventional way; a film should be a fluid thing in which all elements work together to define a series of moods – in other words, films should be more like music in that Tavernier’s ambition is to depict a sequence of emotions that develop into one another.
Tavernier had two requirements for the film. First, the picture had to be authentic. To this end, he consulted continually with the jazz musicians involved in the movie. Many parts of the script were re-written at the request of the musicians to eliminate elements in the story that they deemed implausible or incongruous. Second, Tavernier recorded all musical performances live and without interruption – in other words, he filmed the musicians as they were playing without edits to improve the performance. Dexter Gordon is obviously no longer in his prime and has difficulty in the opening songs. Tavernier regarded this as thematic – he didn’t want Dale Taylor to sound the same way at the end of the movie as he sounds in the first performances; the movie is supposed to document Taylor’s improvement. One of the film’s themes is that playing this kind of music is demanding and emotionally difficult – Gordon makes mistakes and fears that he is no longer inspired.
10.
Warner Brothers initially rejected the script for ‘Round Midnight. None of the other studios in Hollywood were willing to take a chance on the movie’s production. Warner Brothers, in its budget projections, predicted that the film would make no money at all in American distribution. However, Clint Eastwood had read the script and urged studio executives with whom he was friendly to make the film. Martin Scorsese also advocated on behalf of the movie. And, so, with profound reservations, Warner Brothers advanced two-million dollars for the film. This was a low-budget for the time. Tavernier recalls that he was paid almost nothing. Gordon’s record company, planning to make some money from a sound-track recording, paid Tavernier enough “under the table” so that he could survive during the year-and-a-half production.
Tavernier initially wanted Sonny Rollins for the main role. Rollins wasn’t interested and had no acting experience. Tavernier recalled that he saw a short film featuring Dexter Gordon and, immediately, recognized that the musician had great “screen presence”. So Gordon was cast for the part.
11.
Hollywood has a complex and shameful history of purging Black musicians from films about Jazz. Segregation prevailed until the fifties and, generally, it was thought distasteful to show White musicians performing with Black artists. (An exception was a genre of films in which White musicians actually teach Black jazz performers how to play.) This pattern of excluding Black musicians from films about an Afro-American art form begins most decisively with 1927's The Jazz Singer, Hollywood’s first talking picture. The Jazz Singer, an astonishing film on many levels, features a Jewish cantor’s son who is ostracized by his family for performing as a minstrel in Black face. In 1930, The King of Jazz was released. The titular “King of Jazz” turns out to be Paul Whiteman, a well-known Caucasian band director who freely appropriated (some might say “misappropriated”) African-American musical styles. There are no Black artists in The King of Jazz, indeed, no Black people at all, except for one little girl who sits in a short few-second shot on Whiteman’s lap. Hollywood continued this trend for more than three decades. Young Man with a Horn (1950) stars Kirk Douglas. Jimmy Stewart plays trombone in The Glenn Miller Story (1954). The Man with a Golden Arm (1955) about a heroin-addicted jazz drummer stars Frank Sinatra. As late as 1988, Sting stars in Stormy Monday, a jazz film featuring a band comprised of White Polish musicians – the jazz club featured in the film is located in Belfast. Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999) is about an American musician played by Sean Penn obsessed with the music of Django Reinhardt. Tavernier’s ‘Round Midnight is the first jazz film to feature an African-American protagonist. The picture was followed by Clint Eastwood’s Bird about Charley Parker released in 1988.
12.
When a top Warner Brother’s exec saw the film, he asked if Dale Taylor was supposed to be homosexual. “I can tell by the way he walks,” the Exec said, “and the fact he addresses everyone as ‘lady’.”
13.
Dexter Gordon said that his favorite actors were Richard Burton, James Mason, and George Sanders because they all spoke with intonations “like a tenor sax.”
14.
When the set for “The Blue Note” was being built, Herbie Hancock approached the set-designer Alexander Trauner with some trepidation. Hancock was concerned that the set would not be acoustically sound. When Hancock asked Trauner about the set design, Trauner (who spoke with a very heavy Hungarian accent) said: “Well, you know, I designed the sets for Rene Clair’s Under the Roofs of Paris. I made those sets specifically with sound in mind. Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) was the first sound film ever made in France.”
In fact, “The Blue Note” set was so acoustically superb that many of the musicians who played in that room have said it had the best sound of any place where they performed.
For a time, there was a cottage industry in Paris showing American musicians the set representing “Birdland”. The set was apparently so exact and beautiful that it duplicated the famous Manhattan night club perfectly, but had better sound.
15.
Tavernier said that he “allowed long pauses” in dialogue scenes “the same way that in the jazz the notes that people don’t play are as important as the notes that they play.” Tavernier observed “the bizarre enigmatic way jazz musicians relate to one another – they make Pinter’s characters sound like over-explainers...”
16.
The last word belongs to Dexter Gordon: “Why do most jazz stories dwell on the negative side of this life? We are people who get to play music for a living. What could be better?”
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