any ideas? blue influence in old movie soundtracks

[AllenLowe]

for this blues project I am looking for older film soundtrack music (pre-1952) which shows a blues influence, cheesy or not - so far I've come up with A Streetcar Named Desire (Alex North) - any other ideas? Theres the Man with the Golden Arm, but that's 1955, so I may or may not be able to use it as I haven't figured out yet if I am going past 1952 -

Edited January 16, 2009 by AllenLowe

[Hot Ptah]

Are you looking for entire film sountracks with a blues feeling or influence, or are you looking for songs within a film with a blues influence (such as Martha Tilton's vocal on "Drum Boogie" in "Ball of Fire")?

[AllenLowe]

just short passages, individual cuts - 3-5 minutes maybe -

[Shawn]

There's a pretty hip little segment in Follow The Fleet (Astaire/Rogers) that takes place in the engine room of a ship (a very hollywood version of an engine room)...that's from 1937 I believe.

You might also want to check out some of those wartime flicks like "Hollywood Canteen".

Edited January 16, 2009 by Shawn

[Stefan Wood]

What about that Danny Kaye film A Song is Born (1948)?

[AllenLowe]

I would tend to want to look at non-musical films in which the effect is more subliminal; I'm not saying I won't consider films with songs in them, it's just that I am looking for a more subtle influence -

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

A few things that just hit me.

"Hong Kong blues" by Hoagy from one of those Bogart films noir. Was it "Casablanca"?

For background music, there's that guy Bronislav Kaper, who was doing film noir stuff. Not "Green Dolphin Street" but some others - "Invitation" maybe. Not a blues, but very blue. He did some other stuff, too, but titles elude me just at present. I bet TTK knows ALL about him.

I've mentioned this before but the Ernie Andrews "Articulation blues"/"Parker's mood" medley contains a little story of how Walter Brown and the McShann band went to Hollywood to appear in a film. Andrews doesn't say what the film was, but I don't think this is fiction. Somewhere there's a film with Walter and the McShann band.

MG

[AllenLowe]

Hong Kong Blues is in To Have and Have Not - great film, Bogie, Bacall, and Walter Brennan -

[Alexander]

Hong Kong Blues is in To Have and Have Not - great film, Bogie, Bacall, and Walter Brennan -

GREAT film. It was the first film to co-star Bogie and Bacall. The effect she has on him is immediate and quite obvious. I don't think he's acting in the "you know how to whistle" scene.

It's also a great film because it was scripted by William Faulkner and directed by Howard Hawks. Faulkner also wrote for Hawks and Bogie on "The Big Sleep," but "To Have..." is even more delicious because it's Faulkner rewriting Hemingway! The ending is completely changed. I mean, I admire both authors, but when you come right down to it Faulkner was the greater novelist and having him rewrite Mister Short-and-Punchy is incredibly cool!

I once saw an amazing photograph of Faulkner, Hawks, and Carmichael on the set of that film. Imagine what that conversation sounded like!

[Stefan Wood]

I would tend to want to look at non-musical films in which the effect is more subliminal; I'm not saying I won't consider films with songs in them, it's just that I am looking for a more subtle influence -

It's not a musical. Its a bout a bunch of old professors locked in their ivory tower, studying popular music. A nightclub singer gun moll hides out with them under the pretense of teaching them what music is out there in the world. Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Mel Powell, Charlie Barnet all appear in it.

It's a hard one to tackle, Allen. Except for musicals, it's hard to think of any movie that would use music, much less blues, as background or mood emphasis in the films. It was the Depression, and no one wanted to be reminded of how bad things were. Perhaps in Warner Brothers "realist" films, or gangster movies, or their cartoons. Or early film noir?

[JSngry]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Dec24.html

http://smu.edu/blackfilms/

[Mark Stryker]

I was just skimming through a newly published history of film music yesterday that might help. It's by Mervyn Cooke,

"A History of Film Music," and it has detailed discussions of the development of jazz scores. http://www.amazon.com/History-Film-Music-M...8610&sr=8-1.

For what it's worth, I was doing some research on the Ellington score to "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), which is cited as the first non-diegetic jazz score by African Americans -- non-diegetic being music whose source is not implied or actually seen in the film as part of the story world like from a band you can literally see or you know is in the picture performing. I assume this is what you are looking for, right? True background music on the soundtrack creating emotional moods, developing character, etc. Cooke, by the way, has a few other interesting things to say about the score to "Anatomy" -- that is was signifcant because its use of jazz was the first to break away from cultural stereotypes and that the music shows an independence from the visuals that anticipates the New Wave cinema of the '60s.

Edited January 17, 2009 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

Side note - just re-watched Anatomy the other day and was again amazed/fascinated/delighted/all of the above/etc with the exquisitely prolonged exit/decrescendo/whatever of the score out of the main title sequence into the main action. I'm not aware of any other movie that does it quite like that, although I'm certainly not enough of a film buff to have an informed opinion about that.

[AllenLowe]

Mark, that's exactly right - A Song is Born, while not a musical, has music as music in it, if you know what I mean - they perform self-consciously as musicians - Anatomy of a Murder, which is probably too late for my use, is exactly what I am looking for - and, as I mentioned, Alex North's score for Streetcar, also might work -

[JSngry]

No interest in the African-American films?

[AllenLowe]

I'm interested if I can find soundtracks - less than in mainstream films, however, because I am looking for more of an external influence - but I listen to everything - also, the soundtrack has to exist as a separate soundtrack in order for me to use it -

Edited January 17, 2009 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Oh. A rights issue, I presume?

Probably not going to find any separate soundtracks for those films.

Hell, it's a miracle that those films even got found/preserved at all!

Haven't really seen too many of them myself, so I have no idea what type musics were used in the soundtracks. But I'd have to think that there would be some blues/jazz in there somewhere, even in the underscore.

[AllenLowe]

definitely - my only thought on this is to look more mainstream, because I am trying to show how the music filtered into non-expected places, or how it was used by "outsiders" to show a certain kind of exoticism -

[JSngry]

When you say "blues", do you mean "blues" blues, or jazz/blues/etc (I'm asking because of the Alex North & Streetcar references)? Because I'm thinking that the underscore of a lot of older cartoons had very "jazzy" music, some of which probably might fit within your boundaries. Not sure how much, if any, has been extracted to standalone soundtracks, but there's probably some crazymad collectors/archivists/etc out there who have some something along those lines, either w/the actual scores or else recreations.

But then again, animation was very "jazzy" in and of itself, and you say you're looking for sightings in un/non-expected places...

But then again again, I think that most animators & their cohorts would be considered "outsiders" relative to "blues" in general, Cliff Edwards notwithstanding...

Edited January 17, 2009 by JSngry

[Teasing the Korean]

Allen, while I'm no expert, I do know a fair amount about jazz and its influence related to film scores. "Streetcar" is often cited as the earliest example of a Hollywood orchestral underscore with a jazz element, and by "jazz" in the case I mean with a decidedly bluesy feel.

There are others with distinctively bluesy feel, but they fall outside your timeframe. The track "Floozie" from North's "The Rose Tattoo" (1955) and most of Kenyon Hopkins's excellent score for the adaptation of Tennessee Williams's "Baby Doll" (1956) are two examples. That latter was on Columbia and is out on a Legacy CD; the former was re-recorded (with the same arrangement) on North's album "North of Hollywood." The track is also available on one of the Rhino "Crime Jazz" CD collections.

[AllenLowe]

Jim - the cartoon idea is intriguing, will have to check around, as I know some things have come out on CD - Korean, thanks, I'd forgotten about Hopkins; I may be able to use something. Though I have not figured out exactly how far we're going, the final CD may be something like "things to come" with a sampling of 1950s work; will check out the North as well as the Rhino -

as for blues vs jazz, will probably looked for "bluesy" jazz as, in the public perception, the two were inevitably tied together; frequently one was meant as a reference to the other -

[Teasing the Korean]

With regards to cartoons, the bluesy middle section of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" was used in a number of Carl Stalling scores to WB cartoons.

There are two collections of "The Carl Stalling Project" available on CD, and I'm sure you'd find a certain amount of bluesy stuff in there. These are fascinating to listen to without the visual images, but I can listen only in small doses at a time. They're a pretty wild ride.

[Hot Ptah]

"Reenlistment Blues" from "From Here to Eternity" is a real blues song sung within the film. It may be a few years too late for your cutoff.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Just remembered that I have on tape a lovely early fifties blues - "Lost in Korea" by Sherman Johnson - I think it was on the Sterling label but not sure. Complete with machine gun fire in the background.

Ah, I see it's available here

http://www.answers.com/topic/shout-brother-shout

And it was on the Trumpet label.

MG