Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 56

reality of the jazz life. Despite the richness o f the jazz life, it’s never
quite enough for Hollywood.
The worst example is the attempt to chronicle the life of singer
Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues (1972). Despite Diana Ross
in the title role, the inaccuracies and total fabrications destroyed
what might have been a fine film. This was unfortunately an all too
common practice brought about largely because the musicians
themselves had little input into such projects.
In 1959, saxophonist-arranger Benny Carter played and scored
two film biographies: The Five Pennies and The Gene Krupa Story.
Carter also conducted the music for a Sammy Davis Jr. film, A Man
Called Adam. Once again, Louis Armstrong was featured in his
now standard role of confidant and advisor to, this time, Frank
Sinatra Jr. and a soundtrack that featured a wealth o f jazzmen. The
picture’s principal character, played by Davis, and purportedly
based somehow on Miles Davis, left musicians puzzled and fans
confused.
Despite the excellence of the soundtrack, musicians, and
Carter’s score, when asked to comment on the film, Carter said, “It
might be representative of some jazzm an’s life, no jazzman I ever
knew, but maybe someone Sammy Davis or the writer of the script
knew.”(6)
The 1984 film Cotton Club was no better with Richard Gere
cast as a trumpeter. Little of the Cotton Club’s significance in jazz
history was explored, and only passing reference was given to Duke
Ellington. Some of the music and dance sequences, however,
displayed a representative taste of the period. In the end, the film
proved only that big budgets and big name stars and directors—
Gere and Francis Ford Coppola—guarantee nothing.
A major breakthrough occurred with a much smaller film, The
Gig (1985), a labor of love by Pulitzer Prize winning playright and
jazz affionado Frank Gilroy. (7) A film that went largely unnoticed,
with a terribly small budget—Gilroy managed to get actors Wayne

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