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Not exactly fresh news, apparently, but I hadn't caught wind of it until Googling Bailey on her birth anniversary today: Killers of the Flower Moon's Lily Gladstone attached to Mildred Bailey biopic

Last week's show, exploring Ellington's score for the 1959 Otto Preminger film Anatomy Of A Murder and Lewis' score for Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow, made the same year, is up for online listening: Black Composers In Hollywood: Duke Ellington and John Lewis, 1959

This week on Night Lights--delving into the 1957 film, soundtrack, and cultural significance of Sweet Smell of Success with film expert James Naremore (author of MORE THAN NIGHT: FILM NOIR IN ITS CONTEXTS) and Indiana University music professor and Dial M for Musicology blogger Phil Ford. Playwright Clifford Odets, actors Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, director Alexander Mackendrick, and the Chico Hamilton Quintet all helped shape the direction of a movie that's become a cinematic classic. The program is archived for online listening: Sweet Smell of Success Air times for Night Lights around the U.S.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/MG/209674.jpg The Subterraneans, the only novel of Jack Kerouac's to be adapted to film so far, was released in 1960, when the media fever surrounding the Beat Generation (much of it inspired by the publication of Kerouac's On the Road in 1957) was still at a high pitch. Hollywood took great liberties with Kerouac's story of a romance between his narrator stand-in (Leo Percepied, played by George Peppard) and a young half-black, half-native American bohemian--for starters, the woman was played by the very white Leslie Caron. http://www.torriblezone.com/subterraneans.jpg The soundtrack, however, was composed by Andre Previn, and it features a number of West Coast jazz luminaries--Gerry Mulligan (who also appears in the film as a hip street priest), Art Pepper, Russ Freeman, Shelly Manne, and Red Mitchell. Carmen McRae also appears, singing an updated beatnik version of "Coffee Time." We'll hear both dialogue and music from the film, including some selections only recently released on a new version of the soundtrack from Film Score Monthly. http://www.screenarchives.com/fsm/images/CDL/subterraneans.jpg You can listen live Saturday night at 11:05 p.m. (9:05 California time, 12:05 a.m. NYC time) or in the Night Lights archives, where it will be posted Monday afternoon. Some tidbits that didn't make it into the program: Ranald Macdougall, the director replacement for the fired brother team of Dennis and Terry Sanders, originally opened the film with the credits rolling over a Pollock/Rothko-like painting that dissolved into Gerry Mulligan playing his saxophone, the light gleaming off his crucifix. This was replaced in the final version by a much more conventional opening showing San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge in daytime. The words that appear onscreen were originally almost an exact quote of Allen Ginsberg's description of "the subterraneans" (his character is named Adam Moorad in the book); they were altered in a manner that rendered them more neutral and cliched. The film was originally supposed to be shot in black-and-white for a more austere aesthetic; it ended up being done in Cinemascope and Metrocolor. Article on the movie version of Kerouac's SUBTERRANEANS Photograph of the real-life model for "Mardou", the love interest of Kerouac's who inspired the book: http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/mardou8.gif Next week: American jazz in French new-wave cinema.

April 14 in select cities. https://www.google.com/amp/variety.com/2017/film/festivals/john-coltrane-documentary-chasing-trane-release-date-1202010181/amp/

Anybody else hoping this will have some substance and capture Baker on the cusp of his comeback? If it's successful, it will open the door for others: Art Pepper - Laurie Pepper's fear of dramatic license aside - and perhaps, if we are lucky, Hampton Hawes. And as it only concentrates on a specific period of Baker's life, there is still room for a film about that first ill-fated, yet successful tour of Europe with Richard Twardzik and the Barclay sessions in Paris. It sounds all too good to be true, along with the William Burroughs biopic!

I'm the son of the owners of 55 Grand, the NYC jazz club and musicians hang that was located in Soho and open from 1981 to 1984. I'm in the process of building an archives for the club for use in a documentary film I'm making. I'm putting out a call for any materials that may be floating out in the ether. I will pay money for any video, audio recordings, photographs, or other relevant archival materials from the club that you may have. Materials can be of performances or the general scene at the club. Please contact directly at 55GrandTheMovie@gmail.com