Cover of original programme for JAZZ IS OUR RELIGION (1971)
Jazz Filmography
BLUES LIKE SHOWERS OF RAIN (1970)
JAZZ IS OUR RELIGION (1971)
BORN TO SWING (1973)
TO THE COUNT OF BASIE (1978)
THE LONG NIGHT OF LADY DAY: The Story of Billie Holiday (1984)
PREZ – A Jazz Opera (1985)
THE REAL COTTON CLUB (1985)
A LEFT HAND LIKE GOD – The History of Boogie-Woogie (1988)
BEN WEBSTER: The Brute and the Beautiful (1989)
SWING UNDER THE SWASTIKA: The Story of Jazz in Nazi Germany (1989)
DJANGO LEGACY (1991)
BLUES LIKE SHOWERS OF RAIN (1970)
Director: John Jeremy
Original Format: 35mm Film - Black and White - Runtime: 30 mins
Documentary about the blues, using field recordings and photographs taken by blues historian Paul Oliver on a journey through the Southern States of North America in 1960. The film also touches on aspects of life as lived on the plantations and in the cities by a now older generation of black Americans.
Featuring
Blind Arvella Gray, Otis Spann, J.B. Lenoir, Little Brother Montgomery, Willie Thomas, Edwin Buster Pickens, Billie Pierce, Wade Walton, Robert Curtis Smith, Lonnie Johnson, Henry Townsend, Sunnyland Slim, Robert Lockwood, Lightnin' Hopkins, James Butch Cage, Jim Brewer, St. Louis Jimmy, Charles Love, Sam Price, James Stump Johnson, Speckled Red (voice/singer)
The soundtrack is pure poetry... a marvellous documentary – The Observer
A beautifully edited film … the film is remarkable – The Guardian
This short film is itself worth a visit to the cinema – Evening Standard
JAZZ IS OUR RELIGION (1971)
Director: John Jeremy
Original Format: 35mm Film - Black and White - Runtime: 50 mins
A meditation on jazz and the jazz life, using still photographs to accompany the jazz musicians featured on the soundtrack, both talking and playing. With music by - Lol Coxhill, Dizzy Reece, Jon Hendricks and the Clarke-Boland Band. Poems by Langston Hughes and Ted Joans, read by Ted Joans.
Featuring
Jazz poems: Langston Hughes, Ted Joans
Photography: Val Wilmer; Vernon Layton
With: Ted Joans (poetry readings), Rashid Ali, Ed Blackwell, Art Blakey, Marion Brown, Kenny Clarke, Andrew Cyrille, Richard Davis, Bill Evans, Julio Finn, Jimmy Garrison, Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Gomez, Johnny Griffin, John Hendricks, Jo Jones, Blue Mitchell, Sunny Murray, Morris Oliver, Dewey Redman, Ghanaba.
A brilliant fifty minutes – Into Jazz
This is terrific cinema – The Real Paper
A deeply felt, concentrated lyrical documentary – BBC World Service
Director: John Jeremy
Original format: 16mm film – Colour – Runtime: 49 mins
A tribute to the Swing Era evoked by skilful intercutting of rare material examining the varying fortunes of five ex-Basie sidemen. It looks at the years between 1930 and 1945 when Swing was in its heyday.
Featuring
The Count Basie Band, Buck Clayton, John Hammond, Andy Kirk, Jo Jones, Gene Krupa, Humphrey Lyttelton, Albert McCarthy, Snub Mosley, Joe Newman, Buddy Tate, Earle Warren, Dicky Wells.
It is a documentary of the highest order, capturing the disintegration of a musical style which was once the dominant force in American music – John Norris, CODA MAGAZINE
An indispensable combination of jazz history, personal epiphanies of jazz experience and the music itself – glowing instrumental conversations and soliloquies by Basie alumni and kindred spirits; the film is so valuable it should be added to your will. - Nat Hentoff, VIDEO REVIEW
BORN TO SWING (1973)
To The Count of Basie (1979)
Director: John Jeremy with Angus Trowbridge
Original Format: 16mm Film - Colour - Runtime: 52 mins
Compilation documentary exploring the life and music of the legendary Count Basie (1904-1984) and his band. Winner of the Silver Plaque Award at Chicago Film Festival.
Narrated by Annie Ross
The film is exemplary – Monthly Film Bulletin
An intelligent and affectionate portrait – The Observer
One of the warmest, liveliest and happiest movies you could wish to see … a man’s whole life is unravelled before you- Glasgow Herald
Billie Holiday - The Long Night of Lady Day (1984)
Director: John Jeremy
Colour and black and white – Runtime 90 mins - Arena
A feature length portrait of jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). The programme looks at Holiday's life from her traumatic childhood in Baltimore to her premature death in a New York hospital. Included are a number of Holiday's filmed performances, including the songs: `God bless the child', `Don't Explain' and `Fine and Mellow'. Supporting Holiday's performances are: Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins and Duke Ellington. The documentary also features interviews with Carmen McRae, Artie Shaw, John Hammond, Leonard Feather, Norman Granz and Alice Vrbsky (Holiday's maid and confidante during the last years of her life). Nominated for two Emmy Awards.
An unforgettable portrait – Boston Globe
It is as artful and affecting as one of Lady Day's ballads – Philadelphia Enquirer
The film is the best work of its type ever seen on American TV – Billboard
The Real Cotton Club (1985)
Directed by John Jeremy
Colour – 52 mins - Southbank Show
Prompted by the cinema release of Francis Ford Coppola’s film which featured Richard Gere as a white cornet player somehow at the centre of a film which purported to celebrate the great black talent on show in Harlem’s most famous nightclub. Mixing vintage film from the Cotton Club and its entertainers with reconstructed scenes from the cinema film, ‘The Real Cotton Club’ achieves a powerful level of polemical critique as well as being hugely entertaining and informative.
Featuring
Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, the Nicholas Brothers, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson.
Directed by John Jeremy
Colour – 55 mins
The story of jazz in Nazi Germany told through remarkable testimony of those who were there. Banned by official Nazi party policy, jazz was nevertheless employed to raise morale among the front line troops and to broadcast poisonous propaganda to the Allies overseas. At the same time Nazi officers imprisoned, beat and sometimes executed those of their citizens who listened to or performed it. But jazz would long outlast the 12 year tyranny of the Third Reich.
Narrated by Alan Plater and introduced by Michael Zwerin.
Swing Under the Swastika - Jazz in Nazi Germany (1987)
A Left Hand Like God - The History of Boogie-Woogie (1988)
Directed by John Jeremy
Colour – 52 mins - Southbank Show
A look at the history of Boogie Woogie, a musical craze that swept America in the 1940s, but had originated in the logging camps of East Texas in the 1920s. Paul Oliver and Francis Wilford-Smith present a series of clips featuring Boogie Woogie stars: Meade Lux Lewis; Albert Ammons; Pete Johnson; Professor Longhair; and Mary Lou Williams. The show ends with a guest performance by Big Joe Duskin and Axel Zwingenberger, with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Charlie Watts.
Featuring
Big Joe Duskin, Bob Hall, Paul Oliver, Axel Zwingenberger, George Green, Francis Wilford, Smith, Charlie Watts, Dave Green, Wayne Marshall.
Ben Webster - The Brute and the Beautiful (1989)
Director: John Jeremy
Colour and black and white – Runtime 96 mins
Documentary portrait of great jazz saxophonist, looking in detail at his life from early years to his emergence as a leading player of the tenor saxophone and member oof Duke Ellington’s classic 1930s bug band. The film also tackles Webster’s volatile personality and his remarkable, late-career move to Europe where he found a warm welcome and steady employment.
Featuring:
Harold Ashby, Red Callender, Bill Douglass, Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Mercer Ellington, Jimmy Hamilton, Milt Hinton, Jimmy Rowles, Ronnie Scott, Cees Slinger, Joe Zawinul
A sparkling package; a compelling portrait of the great saxophonist – DOWNBEAT
A touching memorial – Stanley Dance, JAZZ TIMES
Django Legacy (1991)
Director: John Jeremy
Colour and black and white – Runtime 52 mins
Documentary on the legacy of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt at camp sites in Holland and France, a guitar workshop in Paris, a pub in Liverpool and at Samois-sur Seine in France where he spent his final years and where there is now an annual guitar festival.
Featuring:
Babik Reinhardt, Bireli Lagrene, Boulou and Elios Ferre, Gary Potter, Serge Krief and the Stochelo Rosenberg Trio
