Future sounds
Bumper package with vinyl, CD and DVD of Bert Stern’s 1958 Newport Jazz Festival documentary. By Paul Trynka.
Various ★★★★★ Jazz On A Summer’s Day OST CHARLY. CD/DL/LP+DVD
SIX DECADES on from when director Bert Stern spent three days filming in sunny Rhode Island, Jazz On A Summer’s Day remains timeless. The kooky shades and bright dresses might come from a perfectly-styled Mad Men episode; but the sounds are still fresh and intoxicating. Somehow, this slice of aural and cinematic joy adds up to far more than the sum of its parts. Even those performers who are not particularly revered today, like the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, have a laid-back effervescence that leaps out of the grooves, like a chilled-out Cannonball Adderley. Other songs seem so iconic that, even if you last heard them decades ago, every nuance seems utterly familiar: Blue Monk, for instance, is a series of riffs that rippled forth from Thelonious Monk’s fingers 60 years ago, not one of which leaves room for improvement. Conceived in a moment, that song is built to last for ever. What’s perhaps most powerful about this collection is how it simultaneously reaches deep back into the past, and anticipates the future. Louis Armstrong’s When The Saints Go Marching In, delivered by an international star, harks back to the very beginnings of jazz, the New Orleans second line. Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen, of course, presents rock’n’roll in a mature state: as he trades riffs with bemused drummer Joe Jones, famous for his work with Basie, you can hear The Beatles and Springsteen waiting in the wings. Yet both those musical titans seem somehow of the same world, unconfined by genre. The same applies to many of the artists: Big Maybelle grew up on gospel and had been a member of the International Sweethearts Of Rhythm, the legendary all-woman jazz and swing band. Yet here she is, in a jazz setting, delivering rock’n’roll in its most primal state with I Ain’t Mad At You. Chico Hamilton is otherworldly, with Eric Dolphy on flute… it sounds North African, South American, and I’m sure somewhere in there I can hear late Velvet Underground. Every moment seems hip, utterly contemporary – until you remember the hip black kids in the audience wouldn’t be allowed to vote or drink from a public water fountain in the South for another three or four years. The easy stylishness of this movie is replicated in Charly’s packaging for the re-release; what looks like a fat, classic 12-inch sleeve hosts two 10-inch albums, DVD, CD and glossy booklet with stellar sleevenotes by Fred Dellar, who, as ever, wears his knowledge lightly, making connections for us, pointing out highlights, always enthusiastic but never worthy. Perhaps there will never again be such a day, when deep, old sounds like Mahalia Jackson collide with electric, new sounds like Chuck Berry. For that reason, we ought not think of this as music from the past; this remains the sound of the future.