The Last of the Blue Devils - The Kansas City Jazz Story

Rating:
Summary: the return of the k.c. blue devils
Review: back in 79/80 in my early 20's i was into pink floyd dead hendrix doors beatles who allman bros santana ....... on and on .. a puristt. the bad scene in the 60's /70's was hard on me . but i had great music . i thought i knew it all . until a japanese jazz singer brought me to the eight st . playhouse in the village . too see. the return of the kc blue devils' well part way thru1/2 of the people left .the remaining people sat there stunned . focused .some were silently weeping. slowly seeping into my veins was the thought this is rock and roll. years before there was . listen to one o'clock jump. bebop switching back and forth from the union hall past & present. shot in a documentry style. there is a charlie story told that will make cry .a harlem bartender story tells where and how rock&roll / bebop started. for years i have searced for this . did you change the title ? or was this rocker dreaming . dreaming the whole movie ever was . well i found it . i can't wait for the mail . share some real jazz greats memories w/ actual 30's footage. they will become your memories. sad to know the late 30's kanas city scene is gone . how wonderful some of it was saved . .

Rating:
Summary: the return of the k.c. blue devils
Review: back in 79/80 in my early 20's i was into pink floyd dead hendrix doors beatles who allman bros santana ....... on and on .. a puristt. the bad scene in the 60's /70's was hard on me . but i had great music . i thought i knew it all . until a japanese jazz singer brought me to the eight st . playhouse in the village . too see. the return of the kc blue devils' well part way thru1/2 of the people left .the remaining people sat there stunned . focused .some were silently weeping. slowly seeping into my veins was the thought this is rock and roll. years before there was . listen to one o'clock jump. bebop switching back and forth from the union hall past & present. shot in a documentry style. there is a charlie story told that will make cry .a harlem bartender story tells where and how rock&roll / bebop started. for years i have searced for this . did you change the title ? or was this rocker dreaming . dreaming the whole movie ever was . well i found it . i can't wait for the mail . share some real jazz greats memories w/ actual 30's footage. they will become your memories. sad to know the late 30's kanas city scene is gone . how wonderful some of it was saved . .

Rating:
Summary: This is the supertop of Kansas City music
Review: I have seen this on film and video about 5 times and never got bored.
If you like the Kansas City Blues and Big bands of the 30ties and 40ties this is the DVD for you.

Rating:
Summary: A profoundly enjoyable, profoundly important work
Review: If the people pictured in this movie were just local performers in Kansas City with no historical importance, this would still be a wonderful film. However, it isn't. We have some of the most important figures in Jazz and African American music in general, getting together, socializing and reunioning after many years. Even though most were in their seventies or older when this was done in the mid 1970s, there is incredibly lively music and social interaction. The DVD is essential because those of you who do not know who the various participants are by name, can learn a little more, although not enough.

Take one performer, Eddie Durham. Durham plays one great solo on trombone on a blues number. Later he is seen discussing the change of the name of the One Oclock Jump from Blue Balls with Buster Smith. Durham played with the Bennie Moten Orchestra, the great Jimmie Lunsford band, and then with Count Basie. Durham was also the first known electric guitar player (not with Moten as the director wrongly thinks, there were no electric guitars while Moten recorded, with Moton, Basie, and Lunsford Durham used a national steel guitar and a standard acoustic guitar. His electric recordings came on the Commodore Kansas City 5 and 6 recordings.) and it was Durham who convinced Charlie Chrisitian to take up the guitar, and then the electric guitar. But more than that, Durham as one of the greatest arrangers in the history of popular music. Moten Swing played throughout the film by Basie, a Jay McShann Group, and Moten himself was arranged by Durham, as were One Oclock Jump and Jumpin at the Woodside played by McShann and Basie, as was for Dancers Only and a host of other hits for Lunsford. The one swing tune that everyone on the planet knows, In the Mood by Glenn Miller was arranged by Eddie Durham!!!

This is just one guy.

What I liked best on this film was the interplay between the Great Big Joe Turner and Jay McShann on a series of blues Tunes.

McShann was the last of the great black Kansas City Band leaders. He persisted as a solo and trio star in the blues business introducing singers like Lowell Fulsom and Jimmy Witherspoon, and emerged as a solo performer and leader of all star groups byu the 1980s (after going back to school and getting a conservatory degree in music along the way). Today in his 90s he is still a great performing entertainer on the piano, doing clubs, albums, concerts and cruises.

You can just here Jay swelling with pride with happiness with the arrival of all of the great old stars of the KC Jazz including Count Basie himself and how the great blues moaning and playing of Joe Turner inspires him. After the 1940s, most people rarely heard Turner recording with swing players. He was usually recorded with R & B or Rock players (many see his Shake Rattle and Roll as the first big rock hit, but I go with Lawdy miss Clawdy and Rocket 88). Here he is pared with McShann and other contemporaries from the Kansas City of the 1930s and 1940s and he b3ecomes so much more mellow, so much more powerful and is having so much fun as McShann pours the music out.

The other thing is that this video presents the musicians in their real context. They are not performing for white well heeled festival goers or club goers, but in the Black musicians union hall where many of them played in the weekly "Spooks Breakfast" dances Basie and other held there in the 1930s to benefit the union and down and out musicians (was there much of any other kind back in the Depression?). People are dressed fine, drinking a sweet taste of scotch or whatever, and their ladies are in attendance dressed fine too. This home.

There is so much fun on this DVD that I played it three times before I got up, even though it made me late for a music gig I had that night.

Listen to it, play it like a record, then get the music these fine musicians made and really have a blast!