Movies/DVD
The Cotton Club was a famous night club in Harlem. The story follows the people that visited the club, those that ran it, and is peppered with the Jazz music that made it so famous.
Director/choreographer Bob Fosse tells his own life story as he details the sordid life of Joe Gideon, a womanizing, drug-using dancer.
The story of the troubled life and career of the legendary Jazz singer, Billie Holiday.
Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook are two expatriate jazz musicians living in Paris where, unlike America at the time, Jazz musicians are celebrated and racism is a non-issue.
Although not released until 1960, this feature-length documentary captures all the highlights of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
American film broadly based on the life of W. C. Handy. It starred jazz and blues greats Nat “King” Cole, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, and Barney Bigard, as well as gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and actress Ruby Dee. The film’s soundtrack used over ten of Handy’s songs including the title song.
Bio of swing band leader ‘Benny Goodman’ from age 10 (1919) to his landmark Carnegie Hall band concert in 1938. Great music and also, guest appearances by many great musicians of the time.
High Society is a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story ( a film starring Kathryn Hepburn as the bride, Cary Grant as the first husband, and Jimmy Stuart and Ruth Hussey as the reporters) starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.
The film follows big band leader Glenn Miller (1904–1944) (James Stewart) from his early days in the music business in 1929 through to his 1944 death when the airplane he was flying in was lost over the English Channel during World War II. Prominent placement in the film is given to Miller’s courtship and marriage to Helen Burger (June Allyson), and various cameos by actual musicians who were colleagues of Miller.