Jazz Parades:

Feet Don't Fail Me Now 

Alan Lomax's Jazz Parades explores the cathartic Sunday jazz parade of social clubs like King Zulu, the Young Olympians and the White Eagles in New Orleans. An overview of the jazz scene takes form in the convergence of "the Uptown Blacks with the Downtown Creoles" and in interviews with the participants, who open the door for understanding the ritual aspect of "turning loose" the dead, celebrating Mardi Gras and sublimating violence by dancing in the streets. Their heroes (Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Buddy Bolden, Johnny Dodds, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Kid Ory, Manuel Perez and John Robichaux) started out in the red light district, where the madames became the first patrons of jazz. Crosscutting between African and jazz parades cement their common links.

Features the Majestic Band, the Preservation Hall Band (Willie Humphrey, James "Sing" Miller, Emmanuel Sayles, Alonzo Stewart, Kid Thomas Valentine and Chester Zardis) and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (Greg Davis, Charles Joseph, Kirk Joseph, Roger Lewis, Jenell Marshall and Ephrem Townes) at the Glass House and participating in a funeral parade. Hosted by Alan Lomax

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Free Show Tonight

The Land Where the Blues Began

Film by John M. Bishop, Alan Lomax, Worth W. Long
Produced by The Mississippi Authority for Eduational Television & Alan Lomax
Cinematographer: John M. Bishop. Additional photography Ludwig Goon.
Sound: Steve Darsey, Kenneth Gates, Jacqueline Mack, Paul Burt
Editing: John M. Bishop. Videotape editor Ike Touchstone
Copyright: 1979 Alan Lomax
58 minutes, Color
Original format: 3/4 tape, 1979

A self-described "song-hunter," the folklorist Alan Lomax traveled the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s and 40s, sometimes in the company of black folklorists like John W. Work III, armed with primitive recording equipment and a keen love of the Delta's music heritage. Crisscrossing the towns and hamlets where the blues began, Lomax gave voice to such greats as Leadbelly, Fred MacDowell, Muddy Waters, and many others, all of whom made their debut recordings with him. In the late 1970s Lomax returned with filmmaker John Bishop and black folklorist Worth Long and made the film The Land Where the Blues Began. Shot on video tape, the film is narrated by Lomax and includes remarkable performances and stories by J.T. Tucker, William S. Hart, Bill Gordon, Belton Sutherland, Reverend Caeser Smith, James Hall, Johnny Brooks, Clyde Maxwell, Bud Spires, Jack Owens, Beatrice Maxwell, Walter Brown, Wilbert Puckett, and Othar Turner (see Gravel Springs Fife and Drum also on www.folkstreams.net). Alan Lomax's book by the same title won the 1993 National Book Critics Award for nonfiction.

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Give My Poor Heart Ease: Mississippi Delta Bluesmen

Film by Bill Ferris
Produced by Yale University Media Design Studio with the Center for Southern Folklore
Cinematographer: Dale Lindquist
Sound: Robert Slattery
Editing: Dale Lindquist, William Ferris
Copyright: 1975, William Ferris, Yale University
21 minutes, Color
Original format: 16mm, 1975

An account of the blues experience through the recollections and performances of B.B. King, Son Thomas, inmates from Parchman prison, a barber from Clarkesdale, a salesman from Beale Street, and others.

Give My Poor Heart Ease is one of a series of films made in Mississippi in the mid 1970s by William Ferris and the Center for Southern Folklore and produced in association with Howard Sayre Weaver.

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Sonny Ford, Delta Artist

Film by Bill Ferris, Josette Ferris
Produced by William Ferris, Josette Ferris
Cinematographer: William Ferris
Sound: Josette Ferris
Editing: Josette Ferris
Copyright: 1969, William R. Ferris.
41 minutes, Color
Original format: 16mm, 1969
Distributor Contact: Center for Southern Folklore

Black and White 16mm documentary film based on fieldwork Bill Ferris conducted with Leland, Mississippi, bluesman and folk artist James "Son" Thomas. Included is footage of Thomas performing at juke houses, his wife preparing dinner, and Thomas making skulls out of clay. The film was made before the advent of 16mm cameras that could take syncronized sound.

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Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison

Film by Bruce Jackson, Toshi Seeger, Peter Seeger, Daniel Seeger
Produced by Pete and Toshi Seeger with Bruce Jackson
Cinematographer: Daniel Seeger
Sound: Pete Seeger
Editing: Daniel Seeger
Copyright: Folklore Research Films, Inc, March 1966
29 minutes, Color
Original format: 16mm, 1966
Distributor Contact: Vestapol

Pete Seeger and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by inmates of the Ellis Unit.  Worksongs helped African American prisoners survive the grueling work demanded of them. With mechanization and integration, worksongs like these died out shortly after this film was made Bruce Jackson's book Wake Up Dead Man (University of Georgia Press) is a highly recommended study of work songs in Texas prisons.

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Gandy Dancers (Work songs)

Film by Barry Dornfeld, Maggie Holtzberg-Call
Produced by Barry Dornfeld, Maggie Holtzberg-Call
Cinematographer: Richard Chisolm. Additional cinematography: Allen Moore.
Sound: Jim Hawkins, Jeff Klein
Editing: Barry Dornfeld. Asst. editor: John Tyson.
Copyright: 1994, Barry Dornfeld and Maggie Holtzberg-Call
30 minutes, Color
Original format: 16mm, 1994
Distributor Contact: Cinema Guild Inc.

Musical traditions and recollections of eight retired African-American railroad track laborers whose occupational folk songs were once heard on railroads that crisscross the South. They recount experiences in the segregated South, describe organized labor and occupational safety standards, and demonstrate railroad calls that survive today as expressions of religious faith, social protest and sexually explicit poetry. A film by Barry Dornfeld and folklorist Maggie Holtzberg.

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The Music District

Film by Susan Levitas
Produced by Susan Levitas
Cinematographer: Thom Wolf
Sound: John Tyler, John Paulson
Editing: Susan Levitas, Barbara Burst, Neil Mean
Copyright: 1996, Susan Levitas
56 minutes, Color
Original format: BetaSP, 1996
Distributor Contact: California Newsreel
The Music District is a one-hour documentary profiling four African American traditional music groups practicing and performing for fans and congregants in the neighborhood churches and nightclubs of Washington, D.C. The film features the Orioles (r&b quartet); Junk Yard Band (go-go); The Kings of Harmony (United House of Prayer shout band); and The Four Echoes (jubilee quartet). A film by Susan Levitas from California Newsreel.

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When My Work Is Over: The Life and Stories of Miss Louise Anderson, 1921-1994

Film by Tom Davenport
Produced by Davenport Films
Cinematographer: Tom Davenport, Jonathan Hamilton
Sound: Jonathan Hamilton, Tom Davenport, Wayne Martin
Editing: Miranda Hope, Tom Davenport, and Matthew Jones
Copyright: 2000, Tom Davenport
38 minutes, Color
Original format: Hi8, 2000
Distributor Contact: Davenport Films

Louise Anderson (1921-1994), the gifted African American storyteller who played Dark Sally in Tom Davenport's children's classic Ashpet: An American Cinderella, tells her family stories and folk tales, and recites poetry in this film taped in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in the last years of her life. She presents a powerful portrait of courage, dignity, and lively humor in the face of serious illness. Her sisters Evelyn Anderson and Dorothy McLeod join Louise in recalling their experiences growing up in the South, working in restaurants and as domestics in white households, and struggling for civil rights in the early 1960s. Together they present a warm and engaging picture of an unsung generation of Southern black women.

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Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden (Klezmer)

Film by Michal Goldman
Produced by Michal Goldman
Cinematographer: Boyd Estus; additional cinematography by Dyanna Taylor
Sound: Colin Macnab; additional sound recording by John Dildine
Editing: Michal Goldman
Copyright: 1987, Michal Goldman
01 hours, 15 minutes, Black and White Streamed in part only -- the first 26 minutes of this 1 hour 15 minute film.
Original format: 16mm, 1987

A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music. For nearly a millennium, this vigorous and soulful music was part of the celebration of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. In the early decades of this century, the music took root in America. Klezmer musicians learned hundreds of tunes by ear and their ears were open to Gypsy, Ukrainian and Greek melodies of the old world, as well as to the new sounds of American jazz. Music born in Eastern Europe lived on in the imaginations of composers for New York's Yiddish theater, men whose tunes entered the mainstream through such unlikely adapters as the Andrew Sisters. Eventually Klezmer went underground as its audience assimilated into mainstream American culture.

A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden is about musical process, taking klezmer tunes through transcription and rehearsal into performance. Lively, clever, and often humorous, this film contains rare footage of klezmer's immigrant elder statesmen, now no longer alive - including Dave Tarras, Leon Schwartz, and Ben Gailing. - and their dynamic encounters with the younger musicians who have become Klezmer's leading luminaries - Henry Sapoznik, Hankus Netsky, Michael Alpert, Judy Bressler, and the jazz musician Don Byron are all here in their early days.

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