Art/Muzike

Improvisation (first part)
DVD Booklet

In July 2, 1944, Norman Granz presented a jazz concert (actually a series of glorified Jam Sessions) at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles; thus, the name Jazz At the Philharmonic(JATP as it was labeled by the media).

JATP was the forerunner of the outdoor jazz festivals as well as jazz concerts in classical concerts.

Another important factor was that the concert was recorded and released unedited commercially and the recording engineer, dressed in military uniform and acting for the AFN radio was also a great man by the name of Jimmy Lyon, the founder of Monterrey Jazz Festival.



Sitting in the audience that was Gjon Mili, the famous life Magazine photographer. After the concert Mili presented himself to Granz. He explained that he had been brought to Los Angeles by Warner Brothers to test to become a director. What they wanted was that he shoot a ten minutes short on any subject he chose.

Mili proposed that he directs and Granz produce a jazz film. The result was “Jammin’ the Blues”, the greates(and purest) jazz film ever made. It received an Oscar nomination as the best short film of 1944.

In 1950 Granz decided to do another jazz film and asked Mili to do the photography as he had in 1944 while Granz chose the musicians and recorded the soundtrack. In 1995, after viewing the film shot at Mili’s studio he felt he should augment that with other material of improvisation. Therefore the following:

1. - Approximately fifteen minutes were filmed in Mili’s studio

The artists were Leslie Young, Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, ray Brown, Hank Jones, Bill Harris, Flip Philips, Harry Edison, Coleman Hawkins, Ella Fitzgerald.

2. – Duke Ellington Trio

Filmed in July 1966 at the Fondation Maeght Museum in St. Paul de Vence, France. The trio included San Woodyard on drums and John Lamb on bass. This is a rare example of Duke’s piano work away from the band. An interesting participant in the film is the famous Spanish painter and sculptor Joan Miro who was artist in residence at the Fondation at the time.

3. – Count Basie at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1977

The sequence has tow parts; the Basie Trio with Jimmie Smith on drums and Ray Brown on bass. It’s interesting to compare the two best bandleaders, Basie and Duke away from their bands doing extended solo work. Then the horns were added in a jam session; Benny Carter, Zoot Sims, Roy Eldridge, Al Grey and Vic Dickenson. It’s exciting, by the way, to hear three of the best trombonists in the history of jazz on the same video.

4. - Joe Pass 1979

Pass demonstration improvisation in the purest form; a soloist with no other musicians.

5. – Ella Fitzgerald

With almost thirty years between her singing in 1950 and doing Duke in 1979 she hadn’t lost anything; she was still the best singer in jazz.

6. – Oscar Peterson at Montreux Jazz Festival 1977

The drummer was Bobby Durham and the bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson. The front line was an explosive Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry and Eddie Lockjaw Davis. This is jamming at its most competitive.

The Mili Sequence, 1950
by Jacque Muyal, 1996 & 2007

The artist went first to a sound studio to record the different songs and were then taken to Mili’s studio.

The budget was not important and Mili had only one 35mm camera that he located in different angles, each time asking the musicians to playback on the music that was pre-recorded. Jazz musicians, by definition, never play exactly in sync so much that when the moment came to edit all the rushes, the task seemed extremely costly and abandoned for economical reasons and this second movie never came out.

For many years, it was known that this session existed and as an example we can cite what was written in the book “Jazz in the Movies” by David Meeker: “…film considered lost”.

The Charlie Parker song and Charlie Parker-Coleman Hawkins song came out on audio disc in the box set made by Verve. Some bootlegged images appeared in several programs on Bird… But the complete film was never seen.

Some years ago, Norman sent me a significant amount of 35mm reels from his archives. Among them were several film reels and one 35mm separated magnetic sound reel; these were the rushes and the sound of the second Mili film… brand new negatives and positives, never run and the fantastic quality!

After a quick viewing, I realized that it was one of the most unique documents on the history of jazz and knowing that very few images existed on almost all these giants(Charlie Parker, appears only 52secons with Dizzy Gillespie on the famous. Metronome session playing “Groovin’ High”), it became obvious that it was time to bring out this valuable work.

The length of the document was dictated by the sound, only 5 songs were found with the corresponding images from several takes and angles of the only camera on the set. Very quickly it appeared that the perfect sync was very difficult to achieve unless sacrificing the image of the player again some other views not showing the artist. Since perfection was not possible, we decided to show the players, as much as possible... the images are what we have less from these giants! The final version of the Mili sequence appears in all video versions (VHS, Laserdisc, and first 1996 DVD release). However, and in the spirit of showing as many images as existed in our rushes, the DVD’s second video angle track shows another synchronization with some other images not seen on the main video track. The DVD version thus shows almost all Mili’s shooting made in the 1950.

The pirated version of our synchronization of 1996 of the Mili’s session by Andorian “specialists” shows only pirated copy of the main track of the Mili’s session since the second angle was difficult to capture by them – idem – for the last sequence of Hawk dismounting his sax since the credits and copyrights were overlaid on these images. They also copied the sound with the wrong pitch from the 1996 version which was due to a wrong transfer from 35mm film to video.

Thanks to Bill Kirchner through the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, we corrected the pitch of the Mili session for the re-release.

The funny thing is that the pirates also copied the name of the blues played at the end of the Mili’s session(“Blues for Greasy”) which was given by Norman Granz at the end of our work on Improvisation in 1997 honoring his great friend Harry “Sweets” Edison and not documented anywhere as well as our identification of Lester playing on the chord changes of “Pennies from the Heaven”.

It is nice to see that pirates copy seriously!

In this 1007 re-release, you have the real and whole thing! Not only the whole complete Mili/Granz work of 1950 (including never seen rushes), but the pictures taken on the set by Paul Nodler (assistant of Gjon Mili), 10 interviews, on the session as well as on Charlie Parker, the David Stone Martin gallery of paintings, the presentation by Nat Hentoff and as a tribute to Gjon Mili and Norman Granz, Their first work of art ‘Jammin’ The Blues”.

Enjoy discovering these treasures as much as we enjoyed putting them together.

Paul Nodler’s Photos of the Mili Session
By Jacques Muyal, 2007

While doing the synchronization of the Mili sequence in 1996 with Norman Granz, Norman was frequently asking if I hadn’t found the sequence where Charlie Parker was sleeping on a table. Unfortunately and although Norman was repeatedly insisting on the question, not footage was found within documents existing from that famous session of 1950.

It is only recently in 2006 that thanks to the research efforts of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, N.J. that the mystery cleared up.

Un the September 1950 while Gjon Mili and Norman Granz where shooting their second short, a photographer was on the set: Paul Nodler. Paul Nodler was the assistant photographer of Gjon Mili, and as such his work can also be seen on the famous, and now very rare, “Masterpiece” record box set “The Jazz Scene” produced by Norman in 1949 (the “Max Roach/Bud Powell” picture is from Paul Nodler).

On that day of 1950, Paul Nodler shot around 100 pictures of extraordinary quality, never released to this day… among others several shots… of Bird sleeping on a table!

It became obvious that these unique photos had to be released for the first time with the re-release of that historical session. Not only do these pictures, stand by themselves for their historical value but they fully explain what happened during the session, how complicated the project was in terms of asking the musicians to synchronize their playback with the different camera positioned differently at each time… In fact, it explains why the project was aborted… but what a legacy for the history of Jazz!

A fantastic “musical” slide show presentation of the Paul Nodler’s pictures was produced only for this DVD release by web master Edwin Vitery, using images from the Paul Nodler Photographic Collection of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. In addition each picture appears with and without appropriate comments.

You can enjoy each of these unique photos as long as you want on the screen!

Extra Rushes & Sequence of the Mili Session

While doing the best possible work of synchronizing the Mili session, same footage was not utilized on the resulting main track. We thought that this footage could now be added as it is, without sound, completing all the images existing on 35mm film. The addition of this footage and Paul Nodler’s photos also help to understand that famous session of 1950. Last but not least, we also included the footage of Ella singing “I Only Have Eye for You”. Unfortunately, not sound was ever found. Hank O’Neal, photographer, photo and jazz historian and producer of Chiaroscuro Records gave the idea to include subtitles on Ella’s outstanding filming by Mili.

The Interviews

Aside of the original interviews of “Improvisation” by Hank Jones, Sweets Edison and Clark Terry, we pay tribute to Charlie Parker by some of his great companions and disciples, such as Jay McShaan, Phil Woods, Roy Haynes, James Moody, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath and writer Ira Gitler.

And as usual on our Norman Granz series:

- A unique gallery of paintings by David Stone Martin
- Narration and presentation by Nat Hentoff