Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen eds. by Björn Heile, Peter Elsdon, and Jenny Doctor (review)

The genesis of this edited collection lies in the donation to the University of Sussex in 2008/9 of several thousand VHS recordings depicting jazz. A project to analyze and advertise the collection was subsequently funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council's "Beyond Text" scheme and developed in the conference "Watching Jazz: Analysing Jazz Performance on Audiovisual Resources" at the University of Glasgow in 2011. This collection of essays represents the conclusion of this study; it showcases a variety of theories and methodologies for appraising jazz on audiovisual media.

A companion website that provides the specific video extracts discussed enhances this book. The provision of these short clips (all are thirty seconds or less) is an excellent addition to the volume, allowing the authors keep their writing tightly focused by drawing out themes and analyses of audiovisual material.

The editors are keen to explain in their introduction that this study is about more than "narrative feature films … ('biopics'), set in the jazz milieu, or at least using jazz as a soundtrack. … live footage of jazz greats in performance … [and] historic footage showing what jam sessions in Harlem clubs in the 1920s and '30s were really like" (p. 1). As such, the four chapters of "Part One: Shaping Screen Media" provide a historical overview of the ways jazz has been heard, seen, and utilized on screen. In his opening chapter, Peter Elsdon expounds the idea that far from being simply background music, jazz has historically been used as a constructive expressive component in different audiovisual art forms. The technological limitations of older forms of media necessitated artistic solutions for uniting jazz and screen media to best effect. Elsdon gives the example of the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing "Take the A-Train" in the 1943 film Reveille with Beverley on a film set designed to look like a train carriage. Although this sequence was produced for a Hollywood film, its standalone nature, staged performance, and the way that Ellington breaks narrative believability by addressing the camera directly, continue in the tradition of Soundies. (Soundies, which were produced between 1940 and 1946, were three-minute films, each containing a song, dance, and band or orchestral number). Elsdon also establishes theories and standpoints that are developed later in the book—for example, suggesting that the televisual positioning of artists in a duo setting can imply a hierarchy to the viewer, something which would not be audible on an audio recording.

The editors also comment that while audio recordings can mask race and gender, the addition of visual media prompts questions about these issues. In chapter 2, Emile Wennekes explains how, as technologies showcasing jazz on screen developed, different racial aspects of jazz were foregrounded. He gives the example of the availability of Soundies by the African American jazz greats in Panoram audiovisual jukeboxes in the early 1940s, and the contrasting example of the depiction of jazz as a "white man's affair" (p. 66) in the Vitaphone shorts produced by Warner Brothers from 1926–29. In her discussion of Nat King Cole's transition from guest star to variety show host, Kristin McGee deals explicitly with racial expectations in mid-century America. She explains how, when the crossover jazz/pop artist Cole appeared as a guest artist for Ed Sullivan in March 1954, the show framed him within its established (white) tradition, with no space allowed for interaction with the audience. Cole later proved himself to be skilled in handling a television audience: The Nat King Cole Show aired on NBC for sixty-four weeks beginning in November 1956; it eventually ended because television stations worried that supporting a show with an African American host would incur reprisals in the South. In chapter 7, Krin Gabbard discusses...