Hot Chocolate

The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.

Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa and His Orchestra perform "Let Me Off Uptown".

The story of the black, gay origins of rock n' roll. It explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard's complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon's life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions.

Mel Tormé and the Mel-Tones sing the title song in this 1945 Soundie (a short film produced to be played on jukebox-like Panoram machines).

Steve Raleight wants to produce a show on Broadway. He finds a backer, Herman Whipple and a leading lady, Sally Lee. But Caroline Whipple forces Steve to use a known star, not a newcomer. Sally purchases a horse, she used to train when her parents had a farm before the depression and with to ex-vaudevillians, Sonny Ledford and Peter Trott she trains it to win a race, providing the money Steve needs for his show.

Cab Calloway performing his famous hit "Minnie the Moocher".

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.

Jazz is my Native Language: A Portrait of Toshiko Akiyoshi is a 1983 documentary film by Renee Cho about the jazz pianist, composer, arranger and big band leader Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Acoustic Alchemy: Best Kept Secret

Containing a vibrant concert by the Miles Davis Band featuring Keith Jarrett.

The King Cole Trio and Ida James perform the title song in this Soundie.

In 1984, a fashionable young woman spontaneously lectures her friend about good oral hygiene. Produced by the American Dental Association.

Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and '70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers - brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane - are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America's most innovative art form. FIRE MUSIC showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries, and produced landmark albums like Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane's Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement's key players.

In this Soundie, the Mills Brothers sing the title song to a cut-out image of Dorothy Dandridge, which then comes to life and dances for them.

Big Band leader and 1930s Broadway starlet Gracie Barrie sings a lovely little ditty about a wife’s revenge on her cheating husband. (Oddball Films)

Sylvia Froos features in this Vitaphone short from 1941.

Jazz session: Dizzy Gillepsie en concert au studio 104 - 1970

Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own jazz club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of her murder.

Jazz Legends: Charles Mingus & Eric Dolphy - 1964

Director — and piano player — Clint Eastwood explores his life-long passion for piano blues, using a treasure trove of rare historical footage in addition to interviews and performances by such living legends as Pinetop Perkins and Jay McShann, as well as Dave Brubeck and Marcia Ball.