In recent days we’ve brought you doc­u­men­tary films explor­ing the birth­place of the blues and the genius of Theo­nious Monk. Today, we fea­ture one of the most styl­ish jazz films ever made: Jam­min’ the Blues, direct­ed by Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili in 1944.

Born in Alba­nia and trained as an engi­neer, Mili worked close­ly with the famed MIT researcher and inven­tor Harold Edger­ton to devel­op stop-action strobe pho­tog­ra­phy. At Life, Mili used his tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry to cre­ate a dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic style. High in con­trast and razor-sharp, Mil­i’s pic­tures often reveal ath­letes, dancers and oth­er per­form­ers at moments of peak action. He some­times used a rapid series of flash­es to trace the evo­lu­tion of a motion or ges­ture. His most famous images fea­ture bright­ly rim-lit sub­jects against a back­ground of pure black.

In 1944, Warn­er Broth­ers com­mis­sioned Mili to bring his trade­mark style to the movies. Jam­min’ the Blues looks as though it jumped right from the pages of Life. As the film fades in, we see only a pair of con­cen­tric cir­cles, a pure abstrac­tion. The cam­era pulls back to reveal the great tenor sax­o­phon­ist Lester Young in his pork pie hat. Young is soon joined by a group of top musi­cians, includ­ing Red Cal­len­der, Sweets Edi­son, Mar­lowe Mor­ris, Sid­ney Catlett, Bar­ney Kessel, Marie Bryant and Joe Jones. A spir­it­ed “jam ses­sion” is on.

Despite the impro­vi­sa­tion­al nature of the sub­ject, Jam­min’ the Blues was painstak­ing­ly con­struct­ed from many shots, with the per­form­ers mov­ing in synch to a pre-record­ed sound­track. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is by Robert Burks, who went on to be the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy on many of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s films, includ­ing North by North­west and Ver­ti­go.

Jam­min’ the Blues runs an exhil­a­rat­ing 10 min­utes, and has been added to our archive of Free Movies.

In 1981, film pro­duc­er Bruce Rick­er had a chance encounter with direc­tor and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Chris­t­ian Black­wood on the streets of New York. Rick­er had just released a doc­u­men­tary on Kansas City jazz, called The Last of the Blue Dev­ils, and Black­wood told him that he too had done a lit­tle work on jazz. When Rick­er went to see the footage, he was stunned. The reels, he would lat­er say, were “just sit­ting there like the Dead Sea Scrolls of jazz.”

The “scrolls” were an inti­mate look into the life and music of Thelo­nious Monk, the leg­endary bebop pianist and com­pos­er. Black­wood and his broth­er, Michael, had received a com­mis­sion from West Ger­man pub­lic tele­vi­sion in late 1967, and were grant­ed unprece­dent­ed access to Monk. They fol­lowed him around New York, Atlanta and Europe for six months. The result­ing ciné­ma vérité spe­cial aired only once, and was for­got­ten.

Excit­ed by what he saw, Rick­er sug­gest­ed to Black­wood that they use the footage as the nucle­us of a new doc­u­men­tary. They hoped to enlist Monk for the project, but the musi­cian was in fail­ing health and died ear­ly the next year. Even­tu­al­ly they brought Char­lotte Zwerin on board as direc­tor and Clint East­wood on as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er. New scenes were shot fea­tur­ing inter­views with musi­cians, friends and fam­i­ly, along with con­tem­po­rary inter­pre­ta­tions of Monk’s music by Bar­ry Har­ris and Tom­my Flana­gan. Thelo­nious Monk: Straight, No Chas­er was released in 1988 to rave reviews.

“The film’s late-60’s por­tions, which doc­u­ment a Euro­pean tour and also catch Monk play­ing in clubs and in record­ing ses­sions, are some of the most valu­able jazz sequences ever shot,” writes Stephen Hold­en in The New York Times. “Close­ups of Monk’s hands on the key­board reveal a tech­nique that was unusu­al­ly tense, spiky and aggres­sive. Oth­er scenes show him explain­ing his com­po­si­tions and chord struc­tures, giv­ing instruc­tions in terse, bare­ly intel­li­gi­ble growls that even his fel­low musi­cians found dif­fi­cult to inter­pret.”

Monk’s man­ner­isms tend­ed to block peo­ple from appre­ci­at­ing the ele­gance and sophis­ti­ca­tion of his com­po­si­tions. As Rob Van der Bliek writes in his intro­duc­tion to The Thelo­nious Monk Read­er, “Monk’s image–his on-stage pirou­ettes, pac­ing, danc­ing, flat-hand­ed play­ing, floun­der­ing foot­work, mum­bling speech, nod­ding off or lay­ing out, his goa­tee, glass­es, and hats–was very much a part of his allure, although com­bined with an idio­syn­crat­ic piano tech­nique it may have ini­tial­ly done more harm than good for his recep­tion by the crit­ics.”

By now, Monk’s place in the jazz pan­theon is secure. Thelo­nious Monk: Straight, No Chas­er is a fas­ci­nat­ing por­trait of a tru­ly orig­i­nal artist. The one-hour, 30-minute film is shown above, and can also be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via Metafil­ter