A Short History of Jazz in Movies

1927 - 2016

Image by L.E. Wilson from RedBubble based on work by Bumiputra, Pizieno, and Canva on Pixabay

They say styles go in and out of fashion. What once was popular falls out of favor only to return on top sometime later. A similar phenomenon can be found in music. Here is a quick history of “jazz” in movies, which you will notice starts as it ends, with “broadway musical”:

The Jazz Singer (1927) (broadway musical)
The Jungle Book (1967) (dance music)
All That Jazz (1979) (broadway musical)
Swing Kids (1993) (dance music)
Whiplash (2014) (jazz band music)
La La Land (2016) (broadway musical)

Now if you take the title of the movie as a guide, then the The Jazz Singer (1927) was obviously meant to feature Jazz music. But the music Al Jolson performs in this movie is really more like musical theater. Al Jolson whistles (he’s amazingly good at that!), dances on his own with lots of hip thrusts, while singing, and plays the piano in an upbeat, funny manner that includes gibberish or nonsense sounds known as scat singing. “I’m going to sing it jazzy,” he tells his mother as he begins a rendition of “Blue Skies” that is fast and fun, not the slow ballad that he also is known to sing. What a talent! Please watch him perform (the sound starts at the 15 second mark). It will make you smile:

In this movie Al Jolson is really singing show tunes. In fact the movie is about a stage singer, so some of his performances are literally Broadway-style musicals, e.g. “Mammy”. Is this really jazz though? Is “jazz hands” really dancing? The short answer to both is, yes! But we already can discern that in order for this to be true, the definition of jazz has to be very broad in order to encompass very different types of music that includes Broadway tunes as well as whatever you think jazz is.

Next up in our historical stroll is The Jungle Book (1967), with the song “I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)” representing New Orleans jazz music via the gravely-voiced singer Louis Prima, who also voices the orangutan, King Louis. The animation of the characters dancing in this movie was created based on video of the musicians performing this number. There is still the upbeat, happy music reminiscent of The Jazz Singer, including scat singing again, but now it’s a little bit more danceable with a partner, and a bit more unrestrained, looser.

What follows is jazz refined and abstracted by professionals. Jazz is now removed from the earthy common expression of regular people. It is now art, as in All That Jazz (1979). We’ve entered the world of Bob Fosse, the promotor of “jazz hands.” It’s definitely interesting, and the whimsy and energy is there, but along with it is something somber and dark. The songs are precisely sung by “the cast” like a chorus, there is no scat singing, and the dancing is highly choreographed, unnatural. It’s once again essentially Broadway show tunes. It’s musical theater. It’s showtime, folks!

Now we reach the epitome of exciting jazz music represented in the movie Swing Kids (1993), which specifically calls out Benny Goodman as the best and has five of his songs on the soundtrack. Louis Prima is once again represented here with his fantastic 1936 song “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)”performed by Benny Goodman and his band. This music is not only danceable, it induces the kind of dancing where someone gets thrown in the air with their legs above their heads, where people fling their partner across the floor at high speed, maneuvering like gymnasts on the dance floor. This is high octane music with such passionate frenetic energy that it inspires your body to move. Look—you simply haven’t lived if you haven’t danced to swing!

Then the music calms down a bit. It is still playful and lively, but more suitable for marching bands performing at half-time in football games, or in smaller configurations, in concert halls. Obviously the energy is there, but we’re back again being part of the audience, listening, appreciating, but we’re not dancing. We may not even be tapping our feet. We’re sitting down. This is rigid, precisely played sheet music that has to be uniform and together in order for the sound to carry across a stadium or a parade route. Hence the fanaticism by the music teacher, portrayed so masterfully by J.K Simmons in the movie Whiplash (2014), to play this music—and count it—right. There is minimal improvisation. The jazz in this movie is exemplified by the song played in the movie’s finale, “Caravan”, arranged by John Wasson.

And finally, we’re back in Al Jolson’s Broadway auditorium. The music is now performed by just one person as before. It’s back to the lone singer on stage. It’s back to The Jazz Singer, but without the happy, funny music. It’s just dramatic, melancholy pop tunes as in the movie La La Land (2016). You can watch people dance to it in a highly choreographed and artificial way, or sit in an auditorium and politely applaud the lone singer on stage, but it pales in comparison to the soul-lifting joy of New Orleans Dixieland, of Swing, of Big Band music.

And there you have it. A short history of jazz through the movies. If you are a keen movie buff, you may have noticed that one name is alluded to twice, for good reason.

Probably no movie director has shown as much dedication to a genre of music as Damien Chazelle has to jazz. The director of the jazz band movie Whiplash and the Jazz musical movie La La Land loves jazz, and why wouldn’t he, since he defines everything as jazz. But of course it’s not just him. If you look at the list of “Jazz genres” in Wikipedia, you see over 40 types including Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, and Smooth Jazz. Trying to decipher what jazz is, is as contentious as defining its origin.

But the general consensus is that jazz is an American invention, born in New Orleans, Louisiana from the influences of traditional American work songs and French cajun instrumentation, including the standup bass, the Dixieland drum kit, and particularly, the cornet, an instrument invented in France in the 1820s similar to the trumpet.

The core of this early jazz music is the pep, or happy energy that the 1860s word “jasm” described, which is considered to be the etymological origin of “jazz” and still means “a zest for accomplishment; drive, energy.” This is because jasmine (le jasmin) flower oil was a key ingredient in the French perfume industry that found its way into Louisiana during this time and using it was called “jassing it up” since it likely acted as an invigorating stimulant that perked you—and others near you—up, akin to smelling salts, which were used to restore someone to consciousness after fainting.

The first printed use of the word “jazz” to mean “energetic” was in an April 2, 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times newspaper about a baseball player’s curve ball, Ben Henderson. One of the earliest uses of the term “jazz” to refer to the music is from a July 11, 1915 article in the Chicago Sunday Tribune newspaper, in which a man finally agrees to dance the “foxtrot” with his wife when he hears “a harmonious, yet discordant wailing, an eerie mezzo that moaned and groaned and sighed and electrified.”

1915 Article Seagrove

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[He] had turned – turned to fox trotting. And the “blues” had done it. The “jazz” had put pep into the legs. […] That is what “blue” music is doing for everybody – taking away what its name implies, the blues. […] “A blue note is a sour note,” [a piano player] explained. “It’s a discord – a harmonic discord. The blues are never written into music, but are interpolated by the piano player or other players. […] The trade name for them is “jazz.”

So jazz was energetic music with some discordant syncopated sounds that woke people up and made them want to dance from joy. This jazz became “Big Band” jazz, or swing music, represented in such movies as Swing Kids and The Jungle Book. This is fun, great, powerful music that makes you feel alive and energized. And it embodied and represented The United States of America to the world, even to people like Hitler, a Nazi, which is why it is said that he hated it so. In fact, the movie Swing Kids is about the Swingjugend, a group of German youths who loved American swing music and dance but were forced underground and brutally punished for their preferences by the repressive Nazi government who saw this music as a threat to German culture.

A fair-minded person with all their senses intact, however, should be moved to at least tap a foot and appreciate the wonder of songs like Glenn Miller's "In The Mood.” It’s simply sublime:

The Glenn Miller Story (1954) starring the incomparable Jimmy Stewart, about the life of renowned bandleader and composer Glenn Miller (who died mysteriously over the English Channel on December 15, 1944) showcases American big band music. But this type of music died toward the end of World War II. It died because the economy during the Great Depression of the 1930s could no longer sustain big bands and the large number of players, around 20, that they needed. Many musicians also left to fight in the war. By the time the ones who could come back home returned, a new style of music—another American invention—was taking over: rock and roll, which centered around the electric guitar, an instrument that was invented and mass produced in Santa Ana, California starting in 1934 by Adolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp. Rock and roll didn’t require a large number of players. For example, “Move It On Over” by Hank Williams is considered one of the earliest examples of rock and roll music, and it was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee in 1947 with about 6 players. The electric guitar was played by Sammy Pruett, a member of The Drifting Cowboys, Hank Williams’ back up band. And this song resembles the same twelve-bar blues arrangement found in the hit “Rock Around the Clock,” which is a brilliant song and an anthem of rock and roll that was released in 1954 by Bill Haley & His Comets.

But the term “jazz” continued to be used to refer to music so far away from its origins that it even took to mean the direct opposite. Somber and difficult music to withstand as the discordant dissonant sound that was once lightly sprinkled to make music more lively in the beginning then took over to make rather disagreeable sounds, as in avant-garde jazz, that only people who have subjected themselves to hours of it could appreciate, perhaps as a kind of endurance test.

If you can learn to enjoy the completely chaotic improvised sounds of jazz from the 1960s and beyond that to the untrained ear are indistinguishable from noise, then you have probably reached a level of music appreciation akin to reaching the top levels of a Zen priesthood. Congratulations!

But even if you don’t reach the priesthood level, please know that jazz contains a multitude. And a lot of what is considered jazz is among the greatest music ever made. Please, give it a chance. If you do, you will find that there is no excuse for saying you do not like jazz, as one of the lead characters in the movie La La Land does.

Fun jazz exists, and it is the music before 1950. So please do take a moment to enjoy some of the best music ever created that is capable of lifting your spirits, bringing you joy, and has a pretty darn good beat that you can dance to.

See you at the dance hall!

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