Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Louis Armstrong | ... | Self | |
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Aram Avakian | ... | (credit only) |
Mahalia Jackson | ... | Self | |
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Gerry Mulligan | ... | Self |
Dinah Washington | ... | Self | |
Chico Hamilton | ... | Self | |
Anita O'Day | ... | Self | |
George Shearing | ... | Self | |
Jimmy Giuffre | ... | Self | |
Chuck Berry | ... | Self | |
Jack Teagarden | ... | Self | |
Thelonious Monk | ... | Self | |
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Big Maybelle | ... | Self |
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Sonny Stitt | ... | Self |
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Eli's Chosen Six | ... | Themselves |
Set at the Newport jazz festival in 1958, this documentary mixes images of water and the town with performers and audience. The film progresses from day to night and from improvisational music to Gospel. It's a concert film that suggests peace and leisure, jazz at a particular time and place. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
This is a wonderful document of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and archetype for the concert film, with captivating interludes of visual poetry. As close as one can get to traveling back through time, watching the audience is as much fun here as watching the performers. You can recognize this film as a source of inspiration, perhaps, for the pretensions behind projects like "The Last Waltz," and one certainly gets a sense, given the caliber of the performers gathered onto a single stage, of the magnitude of this event without it ever being forced. The intimacy remains intact. And in contrast with the somber beat of "The Last Waltz," the sun shines on everything here. A joy.