Documentary: Art Blakey

Dick Fontaine remains one of the world's finest music documentarians. The British filmmaker also has had a knack for identifying major trends early and capturing them in their nascent form. Among his subjects have been the Beatles (filmed four days after Ringo joined the band at Liverpool's Cavern club in 1962), Ornette Coleman (1966), Sonny Rollins (1968) and hip-hop (1984). In all, he has made more than 40 films and his subjects have included James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Jean Shrimpton, Betty Carter, Kathleen Battle, John Cage and Johnny Rotten.

In 1987, Fontaine released Art Blakey: The Jazz Messenger. The film gives us an extraordinary sense of what made the jazz drummer special and how he sounded and felt about the music and his career. Yesterday, Matt LeGroulx alerted me that the documentary had been uploaded at YouTube. It features Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter, Dizzy Gillespie, Walter Davis Jr. and many other leading jazz musicians.

Here's Dick Fontaine's Art Blakey: The Jazz Messenger...



Bonus: Here's Dick Fontaine's midday footage on August 22, 1962 of the Beatles at The Cavern club in Liverpool for Britain's Granada Television...