A Joyous, Swinging Salute In Word and Music!
"Blue Flame" is a straight-ahead, very swinging tribute to one of the greatest, most influential - and certainly most durable - bandleaders in the history of jazz - "The Chopper," Woody Herman. The documentary, told through interviews with many Herman Herd alumni, as well as taped performance segments, is an absolute joy to savor.
Director/Producer/Narrator Graham Carter has shrewdly mixed player and critic/historian anecdotes, marvelously appropriate historical performance footage and rare still photography to frame Herman as a Road Fatherly "player's leader," innovator and
consummate entertainer whose life and living (in both senses of the word) centered
on his music.
The white-hot energy that flowed from Herman's various bands is all here - it's evident in the fabulous music and in the commentary from Herman's admiring players. Perhaps no other bandleader in the Pantheon - Ellington, Basie, Kenton - as great as they were, had the enormous number of...
Lovingly made documentary with lots of performance footage - though early ones are only excerpts.
This is the second of the in-depth music biographies that I've watched by Graham Carter (the other was "Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm") and I have to give Carter credit for being a "one-man band" (NO pun intended, really). He not only conducted all the interviews - and with nearly 1,000 musicians who played in one of Woody Herman's bands over 50-plus years, Carter seems to have found nearly 35 or more - and wrote the script, but he narrates it too!. And you get a lot of entertainment value on this DVD as well. With a running time of nearly two hours and a lot of complete performances (both from European TV and from a PBS station in Iowa) that are , thoughtfully, "indexed", so that you can go directly to specific performances on repeat viewings, it's a must have for big band or Herman fans. Note that it is authorized by both the Herman Estate and the Woody Herman Appreciation Society.
But I need to warn you that this is not a "slick" production. While the post-1960...
A truly great DVD
One of the best biographical documentaries of a musician I have ever seen. There were photos and video clips of his entire life from being a child wonder in vaudeville to leading his big band until his death over the course of 70 years. The stories by band members from all the different eras were interesting and informative. This is a must have DVD for anyone who has a library of jazz musicians.
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