[Dixielandjazz] Woody Allen - Part Two

[Stephen G Barbone]

Here is the second half of the article as "Part Two"  I would opine  
that Woody Allen has done so much for the genre of traditional jazz,  
that we should have no problem thanking him by spending a paltry $100  
to see him.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


"I've been a great jazz fan my whole life," he says. "I like modern  
jazz as well, but my favorite kind is New Orleans jazz. Something  
about the primitive quality, the simplicity of it, the directness. It  
is the one style of jazz that stays with me the most."

As a teen growing up in 1950's Brooklyn, Allan Stewart Konigsberg made  
frequent pilgrimages into Manhattan to the Jazz Record Center and the  
performance hall Child's Paramouint. At 17, he persuaded Fats Waller's  
clarinetist, Gene Sedric, to give him private lessons for $2 an hour  
(this including the toll for Sedric's arduous subway journey from th  
Bronx to outer Flatbush, (according to Eric Lax's 2001 book, "Woody  
Allen: A Biography). Allen's first ambition was to be a professional  
musician, though, of course, he ultimately followed the paths of his  
other childhood heroes, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, ton the  
tune of approximately one movie annually for the past 40 years.

Through his decade of stylistic departures - from the one-liner  
slapstick "Bananas" (1971) to the bittersweet fantasy "The Purple Rose  
of Cairo (1985) to the heterodox tryst "Vicky Cristina  
Barcelona" (2008) - jazz has been a constant loving presence. It;'s  
part  of almost all his soundtracks: James P Johnson & Cecil Mack's  
"Charleston" was adapted for "Zelig (1983), Bix Beiderbecke's "Singing  
The Blues" was an undercurrent in "Bullets over Broadway" (1994) and  
Jelly Roll Morton's "Wolverine Blues floated through  
"Interiors" (1978), to name a few. Often, Allen makes vintage jazz  
integral to the plot: 1987's "Radio Days" recounted golden AM-radio  
vignettes of the 1930s and '40s, while Sean Penn's irascible guitarist  
Emmet Ray in 1999's "Sweet and Lowdown" was second only to "that Gypsy  
in France", the real life Django Reinhardt. Traditional jazz films,  
meanwhile, have affected his other creative venues: Singer /actor Al  
Jolson, star of 1927's "The Jazz Singer", is a character in the short  
story "Fine Times: An Oral Memoir," from Allen's 1927 fiction  
collection "Without Feathers.

"Woody is a very musical fellow - really a very knowledgeable  
musician," says Dick Hyman, Allen's long time fi;lm score composer and  
arranger. "He consciously, deliberately use jazz, and understands how  
it works with the kinds of scenarios he writes."

It's all a process of familiarity, explains Allen. "Everyone loves the  
music of his childhood, and for some reason, it has a disproportionate  
impact on the person," he says. "When I was growing up and I got up in  
the morning to go to school, I would turn on the radio and it would be  
Billie Holiday and Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman. This is what you  
heard in your house with popular music back then.