More Treasures From an Orphaned Collection of Clips

Film archivist Mark Cantor offered his annual presentation of rare and fascinating jazzfilms on Thursday night in the Bing Theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The program was the final event in this year’s free, pre-Playboy Jazz Festival presentations. And once again, one was left with the question of why Cantor’s extraordinary collection of material is offered to the public on such a limited basis.

The highlights came one after another. In the opening segment, Cantor combined clips in thematic assemblages. One group displayed the transitional passages between swing and bebop (with rare opportunities to see such lesser-known but important players as tenor saxophonist Don Byas); another found the linkages between blues, gospel and jazz vocal styles (with clips of Mahalia Jackson and Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, among others).

But it was the second half of the evening that best revealed how much of a jazz treasure trove still exists, and how important it is that it be properly restored and archived. Cantor presented a sequence of clips from a ‘50s Los Angeles television show titled “Stars of Jazz,” produced by Jimmy Baker. Although, according to Cantor, more than 100 episodes were produced, less than 50 are believed to remain (unless someone turns up with a closet full of forgotten kinescopes).

The clips included performances by Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Rushing, Art Pepper (playing both clarinet and alto saxophone), the Modern Jazz Quartet and Max Roach. The most mesmerizing segments were devoted to a set of songs by Billie Holiday, with both audio and video restored, and not shown in public since their original broadcast.

All of these performances, in atmospheric black-and-white, with cameras moving in for penetrating close-ups, were extraordinary. Best of all were the Holiday passages, in which the director, obviously drawn to her expressive face, directed his cameramen to hold closely on her world-weary demeanor. But other segments were equally insightful--the close-ups on Teagarden working his way through “Lover,” the intense look on Pepper’s face as he plays “St. Louis Blues.”

For any would-be jazz documentarians in the crowd, they revealed how much more wisdom and information there is in the face of a musician in action than there is in the “expert” commentary of talking heads in a studio.

But the blurred images of some of the clips and the muddy sound of others indicated how much deterioration continues to take place. It’s surely time for a major sponsor to step up and provide Cantor with the funding to establish a foundation for the acquisition, preservation and restoration of an audio-video catalog of America’s most significant contribution to world culture.