Vinyl Story

Description

Woody Allen is one of the rare filmmakers who genuinely loves jazz and uses this music to underscore and punctuate the images in his films. However, instead of commissioning original scores from contemporary jazz musicians, as Godard, Malle, Preminger, or Eastwood have done, Woody, with rare exceptions, simply draws his sound illustrations from his record collection. Among the exceptions are the tailor-made guitar solos by Howard Alden, mimed by Sean Penn in "Sweet And Lowdown," and Dick Hyman's faithful arrangements for the musical "Everybody Says I Love You." Most of the time, Woody delves into the jazz records he loves. And we immediately notice that his tastes in this area are extremely traditional, though slightly less so than when he plays the clarinet himself: he then plays music that formally reproduces the patterns of 1920s "Dixieland." Among the things that make life worth living, between Groucho Marx and Flaubert's "Sentimental Education," Woody Allen cites "Louis Armstrong's recording of Potato Head Blues" (in the film "Manhattan," with music by... Gershwin). Allen's apparent passion for Armstrong is illustrated in "Stardust Memories" by the most simply moving, classic scene in the world: Woody listening to Louis's Stardust... Another musician Woody is fond of is guitarist Django Reinhardt, found in several soundtracks, in a duo with Grappelli on piano, with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, and with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins (their Out Of Nowhere appears in both "Manhattan Murder Mystery" and "Deconstructing Harry," the only case of its kind, along with Erroll Garner's The Way You Look Tonight, which is in both "Deconstructing Harry" and "Alice"...). As we will see when reading the discographical notes accompanying the thirteen recordings taken from about ten films, the filmmaker seems to have been imbued with the records he heard during his childhood, and has a powerful nostalgia for them. This explains the intensive use of recordings by big bands from the swing era, those of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Bunny Berigan, as well as, though less popular at the time for the young white Brooklynite, those of Chick Webb and Duke Ellington. Other artists for whom Allen feels a true affection include Billie Holiday, Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer, Erroll Garner (often), and Sidney Bechet, an overwhelming model for the amateur filmmaker/clarinetist. So much music from another era that most often accompanies the actions of today's characters, without the slightest discrepancy between the music and the adventures.