Jazzz greats Chalie Bird and Miles Davis are featured in documentary segments playing Hollywoods Egyptian Theater this weekend. And all you thought was about Beatles.
British documentary maker Tony Palmer called his 17-hour TV series exploring the origins of American popular music All You Need Is Love, because John Lennon told him it would make a great title. But in the three decades since he made it, it's become evident to Palmer that he could justifiably have named it “Nick of Time."
The series will be shown in its entirety for the first time in the U.S. this weekend, marathon style, at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood as part of the Mods & Rockers Film Festival. It's broken down into chapters on various facets of popular music, such as jazz, blues, swing, Tin Pan Alley, country, the Beatles and music that was fresh when Palmer was filming it in 1975 and 1976, glitter and progressive rock.
“For the swing episode, I just made a list: Who would be great to get? Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway," Palmer said from Las Vegas earlier this week while attending a Beatles fan festival. “Then it just became a matter of tracking them down. It became like a military campaign.
“But what I couldn't possibly have known then is that within a very short period of time many of these people would be dead," he said. “So these were the last and most substantial interviews a lot of these artists gave."
But the greatest treasure might be his footage of figures who were tremendously influential but far less celebrated: Hoagy Carmichael, E.Y. “Yip" Harburg, Eubie Blake, Muddy Waters, Tina Turner, Buddy Rich, Ernest Tubb, Bo Diddley. Palmer also used rare film performances or interviews with George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Charlie Parker and dozens more.
