Page 2 - Freddie Redd News Today

Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson, 1955 One of the foundation stones of British Free Cinema, this 22-minute short shows trad antics at Wood Green Jazz Club, with the Chris Barber Band featuring Lonnie Donegan. Years later, Absolute Beginners (Julien Temple, 1985) would be derided for its high-gloss reimagining of the London jazz scene in its heyday, but with input from Gil Evans and a dazzling fantasia on Charles Mingus’s Boogie Stop Shuffle, it’s not to be dismissed. The Connection Shirley ...

In Young Man with a Horn (1949), Kirk Douglas impersonated a jazz trumpeter whose running battle against the straitjacket of commercialised music was modelled on the life story of Bix Beiderbecke. When his mentor in jazz, an old-time Black musician, was finally claimed by tuberculosis, he was required to improvise a funeral elegy in appropriate tribute. The result was unbelievably vulgar. Since the secret was proudly proclaimed at the time that this solo was in fact dubbed by Harry James, th...