Woody Herman Title: Blue Flame - Portrait of a Jazz Legend Label: Jazzed Media

Home , Bill Holman (musician), Chubby Jackson, Serge Chaloff, Woody Herman

DVD REVIEW

ARTIST: WOODY HERMAN TITLE: BLUE FLAME - PORTRAIT OF A JAZZ LEGEND LABEL: JAZZED MEDIA

Graham Carter, producer and director of this extended (10 minutes shy of two hours) documentary (hereafter referred to as "doc") "Portrait" of band leader, vocalist, alto sax and clarinet instrumentalist, Woody Herman, draws heavily on 1976 material from IOWA Public Television and the Ed Sullivan shows from various years. If not for those two sources, this "portrait" would have been little more than an accumulation of talking heads reminiscing about Herman. Happily, there are some complete performances of the band at various peeks in its existence. From the Sullivan show in 1949, for example, we see and hear Woody and Terry Gibbs scatting through "Lemon Drop," and there's even a glimpse of Serge Chaloff and he steps forward to solo. Of course, you have to be able to recognize Serge to know it is he wielding the baritone sax, for throughout the doc, band soloists are unidentified. Again from the Sullivan show, this time in 1963, there's a wonderfully complete "Caledonia." with - again - "anonymous" soloists. Nevertheless, the doc's chapters ("Road Father / Early Years / Band That Played The Blues / First Herd/ Second Herd/ Third Herd/ Fourth Herd/ etc." ) give a fairly comprehensive history of the band in its various incarnations, explaining how Woody took over from Isham Jones in 1936, how the Jones band became Woody's own "The Band That Played The Blues" and went on to become "herded" by the numbers over the years. ( It was George T. Simon of Metronome Magazine who first referred to Woody's aggregation as the "Herman Herd" and it caught on.) Woody led bands from 1936 until his death in 1987, and the almost two hours running time covers those years, using still photos, material from Iowa Public television and the Ed Sullivan show, some clips from movies in which the band appeared (i.e.- "Earl Carroll Vanities" - 1945), and the reminiscences of various band alumni still kicking when the doc was produced and some who observed from perches in the critical community - folks such as Terry Gibbs, Ralph Burns, Phil Wilson, Jeff Hamilton, Frank Tiberi, Dan Morgenstern, Dr. Herb Wong, Bill Holman, Al Julian, Joe Lovano, Sonny Igoe, Med Flory, Mark Lewis, Marvin Stamm, John Fedchock, Joe La Barbera, Phil Wilson, Bill Clancy, Frank Tiberi, etc.) There are some fuzzy and inconclusive clips from Shelly Manne's home movies and excerpts from various TV interviews with Woody, himself. The Iowa material is all from 1976 and the doc's heavy reliance on that material instead of some of the many other Herman TV and movie appearances is somewhat puzzling. The index to David Meeker's "Jazz In The Movies" book has 17 references to Herman appearances in movies, admittedly not all of prime value, but one is a 1948 15-minute short featuring Woody and band, and another - from 1963 - features Woody and the band's appearance on Ralph Gleason's "Jazz Casual" KQED TV show. Why they were not plumbed for this doc is a minor mystery. Yes, I know - there may be a myriad of reasons, some involving copyright and other legal problems preventing producer Graham Carter access, so it seems that for the moment we must be satisfied with this somewhat restricted portrait. The consensus seems to be that Woody was great to play for, would put up with a certain amount of deviant behavior and was interested in allowing individual musicians room in which to express their individuality. An unending string of great musicians came through the band, and its alumni is a roster of greats - Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Bill Harris, Serge Chaloff, Sal Nistico, Dave Tough, Don Lamond, Chubby Jackson, and on and on. Toward the end of the doc, one of the talking heads goes so far as to advise that Woody wasn't interested in just having a bunch of "nice guys" in the band. He quotes Woody as having said, "Give me a bunch of pricks who can play." Alan Bargebuhr