In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.
Starting from the determination and great desire to create a music concert to embrace peace in Ambon City, Glenn ultimately gave up all his income to hold the concert.
In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
Jake Blues, just released from prison, puts his old band back together to save the Catholic home where he and his brother Elwood were raised.
Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
Documentary about jazz great Chet Baker that intercuts footage from the 1950s, when he was part of West Coast Cool, and from his last years. We see the young Baker, he of the beautiful face, in California and in Italy, where he appeared in at least one movie and at least one jail cell (for drug possession). And, we see the aged Baker, detached, indifferent, his face a ruin. Includes interviews with his children and ex-wife, women companions, and musicians.
Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.
A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the school's brass band.
Taken in by the musical world as a young orphan, Rick Martin grows up with a desire to play pure jazz instead of the commercial gigs he lands, whilst also coping with the problems caused by his tempestuous marriage to an aloof heiress.
"It must schwing!" was the motto of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jewish immigrants who in 1939 set up Blue Note Records, the jazz label that was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins. Blue Note, the most successful movie ever made about jazz, is a testimony to the passion and vision of these two men and certainly swings like the propulsive sounds that made their label so famous.
During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.
Saxophone player Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker comes to New York in 1940 and is quickly noticed for his remarkable way of playing. He becomes a drug addict but his loving wife Chan tries to help him.
Utilizing the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, the epic Indian tale of exiled prince Ramayana and his bride Sita is mirrored by a spurned woman's contemporary personal life, and light-hearted but knowledgeable discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppets.
Ella Fitzgerald visited Australia back in 1960. Gracefully stepping up to the microphone for the celebrated television event 'The BP Super Show', hosted by musician and entertainer Horrie Dargie, Fitzgerald delivered a mellifluous set of legendary songs in an intimate concert setting at The Embers Nightclub in Toorak Road, South Yarra Victoria. This rarely seen B&W television treat is considered to be one of the earliest audio-visual recordings of the 'First Lady of Song', backed by the smooth sounds of the Lou Levy Quartet. Beside Fitzgerald's performance of 14 memorable Jazz and Blues classics, the program also contains original BP musical interludes and jingles from the Horrie Dargie Quartet.
The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
The story of legendary jazz drummer, Gene Krupa. Since his youth, all Gene ever wanted to do is play the drums and make music. This is something his parents would not approve of- they want him to be a priest. When Gene's father dies he promises to enter the priesthood. He soon realizes that he doesn't belong there and leaves to join his friend, Eddie's band. Ethel, Eddie's girlfriend, convinces Gene to go to New York and make it big. The 3 of them head to New York. Here Ethel and Gene soon fall in love and Gene makes a name for himself. Gene starts to live in the fast lane, with drugs, alcohol, women and parties. Ethel, unhappy with Gene's lifestyle, leaves him. Gene soon "hits rock bottom" where he has to face reality and choose where to take his life.
The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a retrospective of the great African-American entertainers of the early 1900s.
In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.
Young Benny Goodman is taught clarinet by a music professor. He is advised to play whichever kind of music he likes best, but to make a living, Benny begins by joining the Ben Pollack traveling band.