A Great Day in Harlem: A Review

A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Songs...

The popularity of musical genres can shift from generation to generation. Take jazz. Once the mainstay of juke-joints, then elevated to the chicest of nightclubs and on the radio, jazz has now been relegated to the wee hours of National Public Radio. A Great Day in Harlem, the documentary about a photo of jazz greats, takes us back to when jazz was shifting from mainstream to niche. It reminds of a time when people thought of jazz as a soundtrack to their everyday lives and when artists still cared about how they were publicly seen.

The film is quite simple to describe. It is about the taking of one particular photograph in 1958. Esquire Magazine is going to have an all-jazz issue. Novice photographer Art Kane is hired to get together a collection of all the jazz musicians he can find to have a group picture taken of them. A group of 57 jazz artists all came for this informal family portrait, and from that photograph, stories flow as smooth as an improvised solo.

Those in the photograph were an eclectic mix of established legends and up-and-comers. Some of the names of those who were there and/or share their memories are generally known to the public. There was Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Marion McPartland, Thelonious Monk, Gene Krupa. Others in the photograph are more familiar to jazz aficionados: Mary Lou Williams, Oscar Pettiford, Henry "Red" Allen. 

A Great Day in Harlem mixes the memories of the subjects of the photo who were still alive in 1994 when the film was made with performance clips of both the living and the dead. There is also footage shot that day by Milt Hilton, one of the photograph jazz musicians, which director Jean Bach integrated well with the interviews of the surviving participants.

The artistry of the performers is amazing and the talent on display that day is remarkable. Even more remarkable and effective is the respect and admiration they had for and express about each other. McPartland, for example, talks in glowing terms of Mary Lou Williams, a pianist and arranger like herself. It is a testament to the professionalism of these jazz giants that they knew talent when they heard it and did not let their own egos make them deaf to great performers. The film benefits from the fact that the photograph itself is not the only one taken that day. Mixed in with the memories of that moment are photographs taken by others as well as the home movies on which A Great Day in Harlem is built on.

A Great Day in Harlem makes it clear this was almost a bit of a reunion of sorts. Many of the performers would have been on the road or resting from performing at night, so getting even a handful of them to rise early for a picture would have been a great feat. There is also the logistics of getting 57 subjects together. This would have been a challenge to even the most experienced of photographers. That a relatively inexperienced photographer like Kane, who was barely starting out, managed to make an early assignment into an iconic image is more remarkable. 

Everyone, it seems, was having a good time, seeing old friends, friendly rivals, and artists they respected. The film also has amusing but true-to-life anecdotes. We find out that they all unconsciously congregated to those of the same instruments: pianists gathered with other pianists, drummers huddled together. We also get a delightful tale of why Monk was nearly late for the picture: he agonized over what to wear. We learn not only that Monk wanted to look his very best (and dress in a way that drew attention to himself) but that Red Allen always appeared in a suit and tie.

A Great Day in Harlem in its own way, is more than just the story of a single picture. It's the story of a now-vanished world. At the time A Great Day in Harlem was released, few of the subjects were still alive (I think 12 out of the 57, not counting the children who unintentionally crashed the event). This vanished world, where jazz was the hippest thing going, now can be said to exist only in the memories of those who were there. 

A Great Day in Harlem is the correct name not just for the picture or even the film itself, but for the era. It captures a time when artists knew each other, respected each other, and celebrated their achievements. It got together great artists who gave the world great performances. A Great Day in Harlem is a small but great archive of a time when we all knew all that jazz.

DECISION: B+