It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story

Jul 2, 2018

1h 55m

★ 8.2

Overview

A documentary about the legendary jazz label Blue Note Records and its German founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. As jews they had to flee Germany and the Hitler regime in the late 1930s. In New York they wrote music history with their record label Blue Note Records.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

NDR

Road Movies

It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self

Alfred Lion

Self

Herbie Hancock

Self

Quincy Jones

Self

Wayne Shorter

Self

Thelonious Monk

Self

George Benson

Self

Sonny Rollins

Self

Ron Carter

Self

Horace Silver

Self

Lou Donaldson

Self

Bennie Maupin

Self

Michael Cuscuna

Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.

6.0

Spaceways

Jan 1, 1968

A music documentary made with Sun Ra.

0.0

Mystery Mister Ra

Jul 4, 1984

Sun Ra, Archie Shepp and company in concert in Paris, 1984. Documents performances and rehearsals in Paris, France, 1984. It includes the compositions "Love in Outer Space," "Nuclear War," and "1984" by Sun Ra and the standards "Tea for Two" and "Blue Lou," as well as interviews with Sun Ra and Archie Shepp.

No Image Available

0.0

95th Annual National Christmas Tree Lighting

Nov 30, 2017

On November 30, 2017 the National Park Service and National Park Foundation will present the annual National Christmas Tree Lighting. Popular entertainers and a United States military band add to the celebratory evening.

0.0

The Musicians' Green Book: An Enduring Legacy

Nov 26, 2022

Stories and music of Black artists who relied on an underground travel guide to navigate the injustices of racial segregation while on the road. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were welcomed. Features performances and interviews with vocalists, musicians, activists, historians, and others.

6.8

Charlie Parker: Bird Songs

Jan 9, 2022

In 1955, on his report, a medical examiner wrote in the box: age, “about 53 years”. Charlie Parker nicknamed Bird just died, at 34. His death will be the ransom of a life that was not denied to the excesses or the consuming flame of genius. His wildest improvisations will open the door to future jazzmen. Between shadow and light this film will pay tribute to one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

4.6

Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast

Feb 27, 2019

In the late 1990s, iconic photographer Bruce Weber barely managed to convince legendary actor Robert Mitchum (1917-97) to let himself be filmed simply hanging out with friends, telling anecdotes from his life and recording jazz standards.

6.6

Stop for Bud

Dec 17, 1963

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."

No Image Available

0.0

Steve e il Duca

Apr 27, 2024

In 1999, on the occasion of the centenary of Ellington's birth, Franco Maresco commissioned Steve Lacy to perform ten songs by the Duke, which were recorded and filmed in Palermo. In 2024, twenty years after Lacy's death and fifty years after that of Ellington, that unpublished material re-emerges from the archive of the great Sicilian director and becomes a documentary.

0.0

Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe

Nov 2, 2006

A comprehensive history of European Jazz, exploring the origins of the US-influenced Jazz clubs after the Second World War, the first steps independent of American jazz and the various changes of direction that have repeatedly occurred in European jazz in the search for that "own voice" that European jazz musicians have helped to form. Featuring the great masters of European jazz such as Chris Barber, Jan Garbarek, Juliette Gréco, Stefano Bollani and Till Brönner, to name but a few.

5.0

Black Journal: 26; Alice Coltrane

Oct 26, 1970

In this intimate portrait—produced for a segment of National Education Television's "Black Journal" television program—legendary jazz musician Alice Coltrane plays the harp and discusses her thoughts on music, spirituality, family, and the legacy of her late husband, John Coltrane.

1.0

Show Girls

Jan 1, 1998

Show Girls celebrates Montreal's swinging Black jazz scene from the 1920s to the 1960s, when the city was wide open. Three women who danced in the legendary Black clubs of the day - Rockhead's Paradise, The Terminal, Café St. Michel - share their unforgettable memories of life at the centre of one of the world's hottest jazz spots. From the Roaring Twenties, through the Second World War and on into the golden era of clubs in the fifties and sixities, Show Girls chronicles the lives of Bernice, Tina and Olga - mixing their memories with rarely seen footage of the era.

7.6

Amy

Jul 2, 2015

A documentary on the life of Amy Winehouse, the immensely talented yet doomed songstress. We see her from her teen years, where she already showed her singing abilities, to her finding success and then her downward spiral into alcoholism and drugs.

1.0

Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women

Feb 1, 1989

This profile of storied trumpeter of jazz, Tiny Davis, and her cohort pianist-drummer, Ruby Lucas, is an amalgam of artifacts about the two women, accompanied with poetry by Cheryl Clarke.

7.0

Let's Get Lost

Sep 15, 1988

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.

0.0

More Than Jazz

Jul 3, 2016

A tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, with Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Etta James, Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, and many more geniuses on tape; a cool Quincy Jones and a laughing Herbie Hancock; sweaty musicians, crazy audiences, and some very rare files.

6.6

Wild Man Blues

Jan 16, 1997

Wild Man Blues is a 1998 documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple, about the musical avocation of actor/director/comic Woody Allen. The film takes its name from a jazz composition sometimes attributed to Jelly Roll Morton and sometimes to Louis Armstrong and recorded by both (among others). Allen's love of early 20th century New Orleans music is depicted through his 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans Jazz Band. Allen has played clarinet with this band for over 25 years. Although Allen's European tour is the film's primary focus, it was also notable as the first major public showcase for Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.

10.0

The Making of Basement 626

Jun 5, 2025

In January 2025, experimental jazz duo Myshko Birchenko and Yevhen Puhachov, members of Hyphen Dash, travelled to Kramatorsk without any pre-made drafts or demo recordings to use music as a vessel to capture the emotions present in a place on the edge of a battle for survival and explore the therapeutic nature of music and improvisation in the brutal reality of war. They packed all the equipment into a car, drove 700 kilometres from Kyiv to the frontline city Kramatorsk, and turned one of many basements which serve as shelters into a makeshift recording studio. As a result, they recorded over 300 minutes of music, which were eventually distilled into a 90-minute album.

0.0

Tobby

Jan 1, 1961

Fictional film with documentary elements about a jazz musician in Berlin.

5.0

Talmage Farlow

Jul 1, 1981

A documentary about the life and career of American jazz guitarist Tal Farlow