And the humor that is often inherent in jazz performance was also recognized by the industry,often because an artist or producer was a jazz fan… and here are two timeless examples..

Jerry Lewis in The Errand Boy (1961)

and again in the kitchen scene from “Cinderfella”  done to the Count Basie classic “Cute” written and arranged by Neal Hefti, with a flute solo by Frank Wess, and drum solo by Sonny Payne.

For many of us, jazz on film also  has been the creative expression of some of fine directors..paying homage to this incredible musical form through finely crafted narrative and often dark stories that centered on musicians , the denizens of smoky nightclubs and tortured musical passion.  In recent times, the most well known include Eastwood’s  “Bird” ( 1998) about the troubled life and genius of Charlie Parker; Bertrand Tavernier’s “Round Midnight” (1986) featuring Dexter Gordon, Shirley Clarke’s mindblowing  “The Connection” set deep in the heroin epidemic, and featuring Jackie Mclean., and many more.

(In the spirit of objectivity, here is a another point of view from The Guardian, somewhat appropriately titled!!)

Then there are the jazz histoires that document the music in a studied and persuasive archival tone..tracing the evolution of the form or a musician or an era..the most well known being the epic work by Ken Burns – “Jazz” written by  Geoffrey C. Ward  (Geoff is also a friend of Finding Carlton).

Stepping away from the narratives of Hollywood and epic history,  The vast majority of non-fiction Jazz film might  fall into the category of visual and aural documentation of a performance.  The subject is the performer or the event and there are many finely crafted films that are  fascinating and endearing.  They also preserve a legacy for the jazz afficianados and they capture a rich history of performance and artists who have gone on to the Great Gig in the Sky.

Gary Key’s documentary on Ellingtons tour to Mexico is worth the watch

But only a few documentary  film makers have truly found the essence of jazz in the world around their subjects.. interestingly,  there only a few films that approach jazz as subject matter outside of a performance,  i.e where the film is more than the mere visual documentation/ recording of a performance, albeit with interesting interviews and contextual subject matter.

Bruce Webers (1988) film “Lets Get Lost  – Chet Baker” engages the realm of the jazz musician, as does Ken Levis meaningful documentary  “Jackie McLean on Mars“

And of course , there is the masterpiece that conclusively sought jazz , and found it the world that surrounded the music…Bert Stern’s 1958 masterpiece  Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Where,  one may well ask, would you find the other masterpieces of  the treasure trove of Jazz on Film. ?

Go to the masterful assemblage of information on Jazz on Film .and find them all !!!  …curated by “Joe” Spibey – JAZZ ON FILM, the most comprehensive and uptodate listing of jazz on film..anywhere..We thank Brian for listing Finding Carlton and honoring us in this assemblage.

Finding Carlton is a film about Jazz.. and how the universal language and story of jazz is reflected in a culture that is far away from its original home.  And with its completion,  it is now in the glorious company of jazz films,…… Jazz on Film..

Dispatches is CBC Radio’s award winning program is that is broadcast nationally (CBC Radio One)  on Thursday’s with a repeat on Sunday. It is also carried worldwide by Sirius  on Friday night with a repeat on Sunday night on Sirius satellite radio.

To listen to CBC Radio Dispatches coverage on Finding Carlton – Uncovering the Story of Jazz in India click on the link or the speaker icon

CBC Radio Dispatches – Finding Carlton

Thank you CBC Radio, Rick and Alison Masemann (producer, Dispatches) for Finding Carlton !

TUNE INTO DISPATCHES VIA PODCAST AND RSS FEED AT

http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/dispatches.xml

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Alberta brought a purity and a deep understanding to the blues. She lived the ‘blues” and like many a musician, her life was poured out every night she performed.  If you have never heard about Alberta Hunter, check out this video of Alberta in her 80′s!

And the Ethel Waters song that she revived and made famous.. My Handyman !

But why the title of this post ?
Well while fishing the internet we came across this excerpt from a bio on Alberta Hunter found on www.coloredreflections.com

“During World War II she entertained troops in China, Burma, India, Korea and Europe with the USO. After the war was over she continued to work in the US and in Canada. In 1956 she retired to care for her mother and didn’t reappear until 1977. Surprised that she still had a following after her long retirement, she performed in cabarets until she died in 1984.”

Alberta Hunter in India ? It had to have been Calcutta since thats where we know that some other well known jazz musicians found themselves in India during World War II ..In our film Finding Carlton – Uncovering the Story of Jazz in India we document the swinging Calcutta of WW II ..Also see Paul Gonsalves , and Jimmy Witherspoon

But there just didnt seem to be any more information on Alberta in India. We scoured our resources including Jehangir Dalal..the compendium and fount of all knowledge related to the Pre War diaspora of African American jazz Musicians in India, and Naresh Fernandes - archivist extraordinaire and author; Email requests to the the friends of Finding Carlton turned up nothing ..

And then secreted away in the Roy Butler Archives at the University of Chicago..thanks to Dr Brad Shope’s research..is a cutting from the Chicago Defender…telling us that Alberta not only sang in Calcutta , but directed the directed the show in Calcutta …

Did she sing at the Grand Hotel, where we found Carlton ?

For more posts on Alberta Hunter – click here http://en.wordpress.com/tag/alberta-hunter/

Willis Conover was not a jazz musician. However, many people believe that he did more to spread the sound of jazz than any person in music history and singularly helped make Jazz an international language. For more than forty years Conover brought jazz to people around world on his Voice of America (VOA) radio music programs “Music USA”. Here is a video tribute to that program 

In the great game of the Cold War, the State Department’s embarked on a series of cultural initiatives to spread the American way of life and counter the Soviet bloc’s increasing influence. Perhaps the most benign of the State Department’s foray into “culture war” was the creation of a nightly Jazz program on VOA..hosted by Willis Conover. And for millions of listeners all over the world, many in countries that restricted access to the West and all things Western, the nightly broadcasts transcended the politics of the Cold War and spoke in human terms in the universal language of jazz.

And those shortwave airwaves that spread the sound of Jazz penetrated the barriers of an India that was perceived by the West as being to closely aligned with the Eastern Bloc and the USSR. And for the thousands of Indians who stayed up into the odd hours of the night to pick up the VOA Willis Connover broadcast, this was the golden hour..it was Time for Jazz.

For the majority of Indian jazz fans of that time, Willis Conover was jazz. This was an India of the 60′s and ’70′s where jazz recorded or live was a scarce commodity. Records were hard to find, and record players and music systems were expensive for many. But many homes had shortwave radios and for nothing more than being willing to stay awake into the night, the VOA relay from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). For many, their education in Jazz was Willis Conover. His program was dearly loved, recorded on early reel tapes and eagerly listened to again and again.

So in 1978, when a group of dedicated Jazz enthusiasts in Bombay organized India first International Jazz Festival, the Jazz Yatra..(and documented in our film Finding Carlton – Uncovering the Story of Jazz in India) …it was fitting the Willis Conover was the master of ceremonies. And for the first time since 1978, here are two rare clips of Willis Conover, live from Jazz Yatra 1978 !:

There are some familiar faces at the tail end of the clip

UPDATE: the new Finding Carlton website provides more information about the film See WWW.FINDINGCARLTON.COM

Michael Rogers (the voice of Herb Flemming in the film) introduced the film to our audience of approximately 60 people.  Our audience included some of funders and their guests, and people connected with the film in addition to other invited guests.

We were delighted to have with us Yolande Bavan, who knew many of the characters and events in the film. For those who havent heard her name before..do look it up here , and in the meanwhile watch and listen to her on this link !!

All in all , a terrific evening …

The best judge of the film is its audience, and here are some reactions from our audience:

We sincerely appreciate the compliments and share them with Mukul Avijit Kishore (cinematographer) , Suresh Rajamani (sound recordist) , Matt Bockelman (cinematographer and sound recordist) , Rikhav Desai (editor) , Sruti Visweswaran (music editor), and Robin Shore (sound mix/rerecordist – Silver Sound, NY) ..and all other members of our crew.

STAY TUNED !!

Way back in the ’70′s a young sax player turned film student made an important jazz documentary. It has been seen on and off, and occasionally surfaces at jazz events.   In the ’80′s he was selected to edit a historic documentary on Miles Davis..which aired nationally and internationally.

Ken Levis went on win accolades and awards, including seven national Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards, and a Writers’ Guild of America Award, among others.

In 2011, Ken learned about our film Finding Carlton – Uncovering the Story of Jazz in India-  and  he found it fascinating.  His support for the film led him to mentor us as we went from rough cut to final…and he remains a good friend of Finding Carlton and a passionate jazz listener.  thank you Ken !

We happened to point our friend Marc Myers to Ken’s documentary on Jackie and its ability to still communicate with relevance and vigor,  even 35 years later !

Marc writes JAZZWAX.COM which  carried this post on Ken.  Marc says, “grab a sandwich, and watch this during your lunchbreak!” We say, yes, but how about a samosa, a kabab, a bourek, a taco, some ramen, a falafel, fish n chips ……you get the idea..Jazz is international …and knows no boundaries

… enjoy Jackie McLean on Mars!

http://www.jazzwax.com/2011/10/jackie-mclean-on-mars.html

or click on the image below

We are frequently  asked “Is Jazz Alive in India? Is there a future for Jazz in the big cities of Bombay and Calcutta or Bangalore?   Is there hope for young musicians ?”

We often choose to answer this with a rhetorical response that results in more discussion…and now we have chanced upon this message from a professional musician in Mumbai …Read and decide….

“Just like a terminal cancer patient that has a few short years to live, most people in Mumbai don’t realize that ‘live’ western music as we know it has reached its final stage of termination.

Many factors have contributed to it’s demise. One is the government rule that loud speakers cannot be used after 10 pm, an invasion of disc jockeys that charge a small percentage of what a live band would charge, the gradual loss of our work places, foreign musicians taking our jobs, recording companies or record labels not interested in recording/encouraging original English songs, but the single most disastrous cause is the unreasonable, unfair and criminally insane licence fees/taxes imposed by an idiotic revenue department on ‘live’ entertainment.

Our main lifeline, the five star hotels, have been slowly weeding their Indian musicians out and bringing in Phillipinos, Russians, Cubans, Italians, Jamaicans, etc etc and giving them our jobs. Are we, humble musicians, powerful enough to stop or prevent this ? Do we poor musicians have the resources to fight a long legal battle ?

Music in Mumbai has never been a high paying job. Even when we were junior musicians, 30 years ago, salaries were not so high. We did it because it was fun, it was freedom and we loved it but as a doctor would encourage his child to be a doctor, we did not encourage our own children to take up music as a profession because we knew the dangers, the insecurity, the risks. Now 30 yrs later when almost all our avenues for earning as musicians have dried up – Where will we go ? What will we do? Does anybody out there give a damn?

So many little children are learning to play an instrument. Some go to (fly by night/licenced or unlicenced) music schools and some have private tutors who take them up for trinity college exams. I feel happy seeing the hope in their faces and sad when I realize that they will have nowhere to play when they graduate from those difficult exams. And what of the astronomical fees their parents have paid for their tuition? Is that like water down the drain?

All these years as musicians, besides being lowly paid, we were not even given the respect due to us. We were treated like the lowest of hotel staff – told to enter from the service entrance, told to eat in the staff cafeteria not in the restaurant, not allowed to enter a particular toilet, not allowed to sit with a guest/customer at his table, not given paid or sick leave, treated as staff or as a contractor whenever it suited the management. When we wanted to enter from the front gate, ‘sorry, you are staff – enter only from the security entrance’, when it came to giving all staff a box of diwali sweets – ‘ sorry, you are a contractor – not entitled to these sweets.’ A contract as a hotel musician was more like a prison sentence than a job. We did it because we loved music but also because there was no other alternative. It took years of work in the same hotel to get an upgrade in treatment or salary. We made great sacrifices. For all those years we were contracted to play at these hotels some 10, 20, 30 and even 40 yrs of continuous service with only one off day a week either Monday or Tuesday, life in the outside world passed us by. We could not attend family functions like weddings, first communions, engagements and sometimes even funerals. Our relatives got married and their children grew up without knowing who we were. We missed all the important family functions. I missed many Christmas nights during those wonder years, when my small children still believed in Santa Claus, longing to see the excitement on their faces as they opened their presents. I invariably arrived too late and they were already sleeping. Christmas night is big in hotels too and those days will never come back.

After making all these sacrifices and giving practically our whole adult lives to these hotels, what did they do? At the first sign of an increase in entertainment tax, they immediately terminated all their musicians contracts, wiped their hands clean and told the revenue department that they were not elegible to pay entertainment tax as they did not have ‘live’ music.

As for the brilliant einstine like thinkers/planners in the revenue department, that introduced this tax to target the dance bars that generate a lot of mumbai’s black money, dreaming of the crores they would earn are earning exactly zilch/nada/zero definitely much less than they were earning before this tax was introduced. The dance bars are still happily functioning with the blessing of some corrupt government officials and the crores that the revenue department is losing is going directly into the hands of these officials. Perhaps that’s what the revenue depart wanted in the first place.

And just when we thought that we have enough of problems, along come the bloodsucking leeches, the I.P.R.S. ( INDIAN PERFORMERS RIGHTS SOCIETY) and the P.P.L (PUBLIC PERFORMANCE LICENCE) department for their pound of flesh.

Let me foretell the future of western ‘live’ music In Mumbai. Finding a good violinist, sax player, flautist, double bass player, pianist, drummer, will be either impossible or very expensive. Perhaps, you may have to import them. The few of us that are left are going to the highest bidder. Mumbai is already full of “floppy disc/pen drive” artists that don’t bother to learn or can’t play a note so they download the backup track from the internet, load it onto a pen drive, stick it in the keyboard and press a button and the music flows. Do the listeners even know the difference between real ‘live’ music and a back up track? Do they even care? Did you pay for a live musician and get a karaoke machine?

And what about outspoken whistleblowers like me, that call a spade a spade and point out the fault wherever it lies – we get blacklisted. I haven’t done a gig in a 5 star hotel in years and I don’t miss it at all. The hassle of going through security, listing every item on a checklist, putting it all through an xray machine, getting a stamped pass that you are forced to wear around your neck, waiting endlessly for a crowded service lift that is shared by all the departments of the hotel, not being able to taste all the delicious snacks being served because you are working and finally a buffet that has been cleared before you have even eaten. I can certainly do without 5 star gigs.

Ten or fifteen years from now, when either the taxes, or old age has finally killed us all and there are no young musicians to take our places, who will you blame? The government, for their shortsightedness, or yourselves, for doing nothing while ‘live’ music was dying right before your eyes?

The government killed western live music in Calcutta 30 yrs ago, next to go will be Mumbai and then who? Goa ? the rest of india ?”

—-Ernest Joseph Flanagan – Eulogy for the Music

Are there other opinions ? we would welcome them…

Jazz

On Friday evening , the 14th of October 2011,  the Carlton Kitto Jazz Ensemble will open a three day international jazz event in Bombay ….Carlton’s set will be followed by Jon Faddis. The next two days feature Steve Turre, the Cedar Walton Trio, and Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Legacy .

Great stuff, and its truly righteous that our friend Carlton Kitto has been finally recognized by the local jazz cogniscenti .. its just marvellous to read the listing on their website: